Advances in Plant Virus Evolution: Translating Evolutionary Insights into Better Disease Management

Abstract

Recent studies in plant virus evolution are revealing that genetic structure and behavior of virus and viroid populations can explain important pathogenic properties of these agents, such as host resistance breakdown, disease severity, and host shifting, among others. Genetic variation is essential for the survival of organisms. The exploration of how these subcellular parasites generate and maintain a certain frequency of mutations at the intra- and inter-host levels is revealing novel molecular virus–plant interactions. They emphasize the role of host environment in the dynamic genetic composition of virus populations. Functional genomics has identified host factors that are transcriptionally altered after virus infections. The analyses of these data by means of systems biology approaches are uncovering critical plant genes specifically targeted by viruses during host adaptation. Also, a next-generation resequencing approach of a whole virus genome is opening new avenues to study virus recombination and the relationships between intra-host virus composition and pathogenesis. Altogether, the analyzed data indicate that systematic disruption of some specific parameters of evolving virus populations could lead to more efficient ways of disease prevention, eradication, or tolerable virus–plant coexistence.SD was supported by the NJ Agricultural Experiment Station. SFE was supported by grants from the Spanish Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación (BFU2009-06993) and Generalitat Valenciana (PROMETEO2010/019). Work on CTV was supported by funding from USDA grants 2003-34399-13764 and 2005-34399-16070 to ZX. Work on BNYVV was funded by The Minnesota-North Dakota Research and Education Board, and The Beet Sugar Development Foundation. RAL thanks Ramon L. Jordan (USDA-ARS, MPPL), Rayapati A. Naidu(Washington State University), and Scott Adkins (USDA ARS USHRL) for their logistic support in the realization of the originating symposium.Peer reviewe