Discover the fascinating mechanisms plants use to shield their progeny from the ravages of viruses, a breakthrough that could revolutionize crop health and even human disease prevention.
The Viral Threat to Seeds
VieiratreatsRange expansion can therefore be regarded as an arms race between palm populations and herbivores, with the hosts striving to slow-downt-attempting-to-hijack-the-seed-trade-of-potential-host-plants.html against virus incursion, a disruptive agent that contaminates offspring during the seed trade. Since the seeds can be hidden by these dangerous pathogens for years, they are a worldwide headache to the agriculture industry.
Researchers have been trying to solve this mystery for years: how is it that only a quarter of seedlings sired by these infected mother plants themselves test positive for the virus? The race to solve this puzzle has finally been cracked, and these findings could have broad applications.
The Antiviral Immune Pathway
The secret of this plant superpower, as uncovered by a research team led by UC Riverside distinguished professor Shou-Wei Ding? But they’ve discovered the mystery behind this and it’s hidden away in this longstanding player of genetic mechanisms that plants use to stop and control their viral infections: RNA interference.
During viral infection in a mother plant, the presence of the virus will induce small interfering RNAs (siRNAs), that act not only to silence the viral genetic material and prevent it from replicating — thus limiting its spread in progeny plants. The virus is neutralized by an immune barrier in the seeds which seems to be particularly efficient during the early phases of seed development, ensuring that offspring from most crosses are free from the virus.
To understand this discovery further, the researchers constructed knock-out plants that lack two of these crucial enzymes which are responsible for RNA interference pathways. The effect was dramatic, however — in the absence of the enzymes to make the protective siRNAs, virus transmission to seeds grew 10 times more efficient and as many as 40% of resulting seedlings were infected.
Conclusion
While this discovery has incredible value for how we think about crop health, it is revolutionary in its ability to offer hope for people fighting human diseases that spread through vertical transmission, such as the Zika virus. Now that scientists know how plants protect their offspring by mastering these and many more molecular and physiological activities, they can explore strategies to bolster this natural defense and breed healthier, hardier crops. The implications of this in further research may be not limited to the plant, bringing with it potential impacts on human health and well-being.
