Geminiviruses: a tale of a plasmid becoming a virus - Archive ouverte HAL Accéder directement au contenu
Article Dans Une Revue BMC Evolutionary Biology Année : 2009

Geminiviruses: a tale of a plasmid becoming a virus

Résumé

BACKGROUND: Geminiviruses (family Geminiviridae) are small single-stranded (ss) DNA viruses infecting plants. Their virion morphology is unique in the known viral world - two incomplete T = 1 icosahedra are joined together to form twinned particles. Geminiviruses utilize a rolling-circle mode to replicate their genomes. A limited sequence similarity between the three conserved motifs of the rolling-circle replication initiation proteins (RCR Reps) of geminiviruses and plasmids of Gram-positive bacteria allowed Koonin and Ilyina to propose that geminiviruses descend from bacterial replicons. RESULTS: Phylogenetic and clustering analyses of various RCR Reps suggest that Rep proteins of geminiviruses share a most recent common ancestor with Reps encoded on plasmids of phytoplasmas, parasitic wall-less bacteria replicating both in plant and insect cells and therefore occupying a common ecological niche with geminiviruses. Capsid protein of Satellite tobacco necrosis virus was found to be the best template for homology-based structural modeling of the geminiviral capsid protein. Good stereochemical quality of the generated models indicates that the geminiviral capsid protein shares the same structural fold, the viral jelly-roll, with the vast majority of icosahedral plant-infecting ssRNA viruses. CONCLUSION: We propose a plasmid-to-virus transition scenario, where a phytoplasmal plasmid acquired a capsid-coding gene from a plant RNA virus to give rise to the ancestor of geminiviruses.
Fichier principal
Vignette du fichier
Geminiviruses a tale of a plasmid becoming a virus..pdf (2.21 Mo) Télécharger le fichier
Loading...

Dates et versions

pasteur-01977415 , version 1 (10-01-2019)

Licence

Paternité

Identifiants

Citer

Mart Krupovic, Janne Ravantti, Dennis H. Bamford. Geminiviruses: a tale of a plasmid becoming a virus. BMC Evolutionary Biology, 2009, 9 (1), pp.112. ⟨10.1186/1471-2148-9-112⟩. ⟨pasteur-01977415⟩
6 Consultations
0 Téléchargements

Altmetric

Partager

Gmail Facebook X LinkedIn More