Project description:Viromes of sour and sweet cherry trees in Hungarian germ line collections were surveyed using small RNA HTS as an unbiased method. RNA from leaf samples of different cultivars were purified and used to produce seven pools from which small RNA HTS libraries were prepared. The sequenced reads were analyzed using bioinformatic methods to revel the presence of viruses in the samples. Presence of the viruses were validated using RT-PCR.
Project description:High-temperature stress (HTS) is one of the main environmental stresses that limit plant growth and crop production in agricultural systems. Maca (Lepidium meyenii) is an important high-altitude herbaceous plant adapted to a wide range of environmental stimuli such as cold, strong wind and UV-B exposure. However, it is an extremely HTS-sensitive plant species. Thus far, there is limited information about gene/protein regulation and signaling pathways related to the heat stress responses in maca. In this study, proteome profiles of maca seedlings exposed to HTS for 12 h were investigated using a tandem mass tag (TMT)-based proteomic approach. In total, 6,966 proteins were identified, of which 300 showed significant alterations in expression following HTS. Bioinformatics analyses indicated that protein processing in endoplasmic reticulum was the most significantly up-regulated metabolic pathway following HTS. Quantitative RT-PCR (qRT-PCR) analysis showed that the expression levels of 19 genes encoding proteins mapped to this pathway were significantly up-regulated under HTS. These results show that protein processing in the endoplasmic reticulum may play a crucial role in the responses of maca to HTS. Our proteomic data can be a good resource for functional proteomics of maca and our results may provide useful insights into the molecular response mechanisms underlying herbal plants to HTS.
Project description:Nonsense-mediated decay (NMD) is an RNA regulatory pathway that degrades both natural and faulty messenger RNAs with long 3’ untranslated regions. NMD targets diverse families of RNA viruses, forcing viruses to counteract the NMD pathway for successful amplification in host cells. Using a transcriptome-wide approach in the model plant Nicotiana benthamiana, We report that the Pea enation mosaic virus 2 long-distance movement protein, p26, protects a subset of natural cellular NMD-target transcripts, particularly those containing long, structured, GC-rich 3’ UTRs. Furthermore, RNA-seq revealed that the NMD pathway is highly dysfunctional during PEMV2 infection, with nearly half of NMD-targets increasing in abundance. Widespread changes in host transcriptomes are common during RNA virus infections and these results suggest that virus-mediated NMD-inhibition may be a major contributing factor.
