Autophagy is involved in assisting the replication of Bamboo mosaic virus in Nicotiana benthamiana
Y. HUANG (1), Y. Hsiao (1), . Li (1), Y. Hsu (1), C. Tsai (1) (1) Graduate Institute of Biotechnology, National Chung Hsing University, Taiwan; (2) Graduate Institute of Biotechnology, National Chung Hsing University, Taiwan

Autophagy plays a vital role on the cellular homeostasis to maintain good nutritional status and also as innate immunity system for response to pathogen invasion. Here, we observe the autophagy would be induced and would not trigger the cell death as Bamboo mosaic virus (BaMV) infection onto N. benthamiana. Loss-of-function and gain-of-function assays show autophagy plays a positive role on BaMV accumulation in protoplasts and plants. Meanwhile, class III PI3K inhibitors for blocking autophagosome synthesis, wortmannin and 3-MA, has a negative role on BaMV accumulation, whereas there is no noticeable reduction in the accumulation of PVX and CMV with 3-MA treatment. Intriguingly, instead of a defence system, autophagy can support the accumulation of BaMV in N. benthamiana leaves as well as some animal viruses would replicate well with hijacked autophagosome in mammalian cells. The pull down assay shows NbATG8 can interact with BaMV RNA. Autophagosome was shown to be co-localized with BaMV RNA and RdRp by MS2 RNA-protein binding technique and immunostaining assay, respectively. These results display it has high possibility that BaMV RdRp-RNA complex was selectively engulfed by virus-induced autophagic body in which BaMV would replicate normally.

Abstract Number: P7-172
Session Type: Poster