Award details

Testing novel anti-viral strategies in plants

Reference	BBS/E/J/000CA559
Principal Investigator / Supervisor	Professor George Lomonossoff
Co-Investigators / Co-Supervisors
Institution	John Innes Centre
Department	John Innes Centre Department
Funding type	Research
Value (£)	13,830
Status	Completed
Type	Institute Project
Start date	01/07/2014
End date	31/03/2017
Duration	32 months

Abstract

Single-stranded (ss) RNA viruses are major pathogens infecting plants and cause severe reductions in crop yields. Viruses are thus a ignificant threat to efforts to expand and secure the world's food supply. In addition, viruses and virus-like particles (VLPs) are important as potential chimeric vaccines, e.g. against cancer, and as nanoscale containers in applications such as diagnostic imaging and targeted drug delivery. A number of these applications involve VLPs produced in plants – Molecular Pharming. This proposal sets out to test directly a novel anti-viral strategy in plants exploiting fundamental insights into the mechanisms of virus assembly and disassembly. The new concept arises due to our realization that assembly in many ssRNA viruses is mediated by packaging signal (PS)-coat protein interactions. The PSs are regions of the cognate genomes that both bind sequence-specifically to coat proteins and thereby improve the yield, rate and/or fidelity of assembly. These ideas are revising the paradigm in the field which assumes there is no selectivity of genome encapsidation. In addition a second approach towards the same goal arises due to the growing recognition that such viruses extrude their genomes as linear molecules from their capsids as one of the earliest steps in infection. We have shown that for at least some of these viruses their protein containers are not truly icosahedral, a unique site being created associated with minor structural proteins and one end of the genomic RNA. Clearly disrupting the formation of such unique sites would have seriously deleterious effects on infection. We are proposing to identify vital RNA sequences/motifs within a few test plant viruses that are involved in PS-mediated assembly and early RNA uncoating. These RNA fragments will be co-expressed in plants during viral infection and the consequences for viral titre assayed. Reductions in viral titre will be direct proof of our hypotheses and open novel anti-viral opportunities.

Summary

unavailable

Committee	Not funded via Committee
Research Topics	Crop Science, Microbiology, Plant Science, Structural Biology
Research Priority	X – Research Priority information not available
Research Initiative	X - not in an Initiative
Funding Scheme	X – not Funded via a specific Funding Scheme

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