Peptide-mediated broad-spectrum plant resistance to tospoviruses
- *Max Planck Institute for Plant Breeding Research, Carl-von-Linné Weg 10, 50829 Cologne, Germany; and †Bayer CropScience AG, Alfred-Nobel-Strasse 50, Building 6240, 40789 Mohnheim, Germany
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Communicated by Jozef S. Schell, Max Planck Institute for Plant Breeding Research, Cologne, Germany (received for review November 12, 2002)
Abstract
Plant viruses have a significant impact on agronomic losses worldwide. A new strategy for engineering virus-resistant plants by transgenic expression of a dominant interfering peptide is presented here. This peptide of 29 aa strongly interacts with the nucleocapsid proteins (N) of different tospoviruses. Transgenic Nicotiana benthamiana lines expressing the peptide fused to a carrier protein were challenged with five different tospoviruses that have a nucleocapsid protein interacting with the peptide. In the transgenic plants, strong resistance to tomato spotted wilt virus, tomato chlorotic spot virus, groundnut ring spot virus, and chrysanthemum stem necrosis virus was observed. This therefore demonstrates the feasibility of using peptide “aptamers” as an in vivo tool to control viral infection in higher plants.
Footnotes
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↵ ‡ To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: juhrig{at}mpiz-koeln.mpg.de.
- Abbreviations:
- CSNV,
- chrysanthemum stem necrosis virus;
- dpi,
- days postinoculation;
- GRSV,
- groundnut ring spot virus;
- GUS,
- β-glucuronidase;
- INSV,
- impatiens necrotic spot virus;
- PSMV,
- physalis severe mottle virus;
- TCSV,
- tomato chlorotic spot virus;
- TSWV,
- tomato spotted wilt virus;
- WSMV,
- watermelon silver mottle virus
- Copyright © 2003, The National Academy of Sciences
