Journal Article

Plant responses to geminivirus infection: guardians of the plant immunity

Bhattacharyya, Dhriti, Gupta, Neha, Reddy, Kishorekumar, Chakraborty✉, Supriya

2021

Overview

Background Geminiviruses are circular, single-stranded viruses responsible for enormous crop loss worldwide. Rapid expansion of geminivirus diversity outweighs the continuous effort to control its spread. Geminiviruses channelize the host cell machinery in their favour by manipulating the gene expression, cell signalling, protein turnover, and metabolic reprogramming of plants. As a response to viral infection, plants have evolved to deploy various strategies to subvert the virus invasion and reinstate cellular homeostasis. Main body Numerous reports exploring various aspects of plant-geminivirus interaction portray the subtlety and flexibility of the host–pathogen dynamics. To leverage this pool of knowledge towards raising antiviral resistance in host plants, a comprehensive account of plant’s defence response against geminiviruses is required. This review discusses the current knowledge of plant’s antiviral responses exerted to geminivirus in the light of resistance mechanisms and the innate genetic factors contributing to the defence. We have revisited the defence pathways involving transcriptional and post-transcriptional gene silencing, ubiquitin-proteasomal degradation pathway, protein kinase signalling cascades, autophagy, and hypersensitive responses. In addition, geminivirus-induced phytohormonal fluctuations, the subsequent alterations in primary and secondary metabolites, and their impact on pathogenesis along with the recent advancements of CRISPR-Cas9 technique in generating the geminivirus resistance in plants have been discussed. Conclusions Considering the rapid development in the field of plant-virus interaction, this review provides a timely and comprehensive account of molecular nuances that define the course of geminivirus infection and can be exploited in generating virus-resistant plants to control global agricultural damage.

• Publisher: BioMed Central,BioMed Central Ltd,Springer Nature B.V,BMC
• Subject: Antiviral drugs / Autophagy / Begomovirus / Betasatellite / Biomedical and Life Sciences / Biomedicine / Causes of / Cell cycle / Contribution of Climate Change to the spread of Infectious Diseases / CRISPR / CRISPR-Cas systems / crop losses / Defence / DNA methylation / Epigenetics / Geminiviridae / Geminivirus / Gene expression / Gene silencing / genes / Genetic aspects / Genetic factors / Genomes / Hardiness / Homeostasis / Host plants / Host-virus relationships / Immunity / Infections / Kinases / Observations / pathogenesis / Phagocytosis / Plant diseases / Plant Diseases - virology / Plant Immunity / Plant virus diseases / Plant viruses / Plants / Plants - virology / Post-transcription / Proteasomes / Protein kinase / protein kinases / protein metabolism / Protein turnover / Proteins / Review / RNA polymerase / Satellites / Secondary metabolites / Signal transduction / transcription (genetics) / Ubiquitin / Viral infections / Virology / Virus diseases of plants / Viruses