The defense gene NbEILP from Nicotiana benthamiana plays a role in assisting the cell-to-cell movement of Bamboo mosaic virus
C. TSAI (1), I. Chen (2) (1) National Chung Hsing University, Taiwan; (2) National Chung Hsing University, Taiwan

To study the interaction between the viral pathogens and their hosts, we screened the differentially expressed genes from the Nicotiana benthamiana plants after inoculated with Bamboo mosaic virus (BaMV), a single-stranded positive-sense RNA virus. Among those differentially expressed genes, one of the upregulated genes ACCT8-1 is an ortholog of N. tabacum elicitor inducible leucine-rich repeats (LRR) protein gene (EILP) and Cladosporium fulvum resistance genes cf-2 and cf-5. Tobacco rattle virus (TRV)-based silencing system was used to knock down the expression of ACCT8-1 in plants and resulting in reduced BaMV coat protein accumulation and lesion size on the inoculated leaves. Furthermore, the accumulation of BaMV coat protein in the ACCT8-1-knockdown protoplasts showed no significant difference to that in the control protoplasts. The results suggest that ACCT8-1 might be involved in the movement step of the BaMV infection cycle. Since this gene is very similar to the EILP of N. tabacum, thus we designated this gene as NbEILP. Because of the large gene size about 3.2 kb in length, the expression of this gene in plants was shown very difficult to detect. We then construct a deletion mutant removing the leucine-rich repeats domain (ΔLRR). The accumulation of BaMV coat protein is enhanced in the NbEILP/ΔLRR-GFP transient expressed leaves. We then based on this construct to create a few deletion mutants to investigate which domain is involved in assisting viral movement.

Abstract Number: P7-215
Session Type: Poster