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Journal of Virology, January 2003, p. 511-522, Vol. 77, No. 1
0022-538X/03/$08.00+0     DOI: 10.1128/JVI.77.1.511-522.2003
Copyright © 2003, American Society for Microbiology. All Rights Reserved.

The Coat Protein of Turnip Crinkle Virus Suppresses Posttranscriptional Gene Silencing at an Early Initiation Step

Feng Qu, Tao Ren, and T. Jack Morris*

School of Biological Sciences, University of Nebraska—Lincoln, Lincoln, Nebraska 68588-0118

Received 18 September 2002/ Accepted 1 October 2002

Posttranscriptional gene silencing (PTGS), or RNA silencing, is a sequence-specific RNA degradation process that targets foreign RNA, including viral and transposon RNA for destruction. Several RNA plant viruses have been shown to encode suppressors of PTGS in order to survive this host defense. We report here that the coat protein (CP) of Turnip crinkle virus (TCV) strongly suppresses PTGS. The Agrobacterium infiltration system was used to demonstrate that TCV CP suppressed the local PTGS as strongly as several previously reported virus-coded suppressors and that the action of TCV CP eliminated the small interfering RNAs associated with PTGS. We have also shown that the TCV CP must be present at the time of silencing initiation to be an effective suppressor. TCV CP was able to suppress PTGS induced by sense, antisense, and double-stranded RNAs, and it prevented systemic silencing. These data suggest that TCV CP functions to suppress RNA silencing at an early initiation step, likely by interfering the function of the Dicer-like RNase in plants.

* Corresponding author. Mailing address: School of Biological Sciences, University of Nebraska—Lincoln, 348 Manter Hall, P.O. Box 880118, Lincoln, NE 68588-0118. Phone: (402) 472-6676. Fax: (402) 472-2083. E-mail: jmorris{at}unlnotes.unl.edu.

Journal of Virology, January 2003, p. 511-522, Vol. 77, No. 1
0022-538X/03/$08.00+0     DOI: 10.1128/JVI.77.1.511-522.2003
Copyright © 2003, American Society for Microbiology. All Rights Reserved.





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