RT Conference Proceedings
T1 Geminivirus Rep Protein Interferes with the Plant DNA Methylation Machinery and Suppresses Transcriptional Gene Silencing
A1 Rodríguez-Negrete, Edgar
A1 Piedra-Aguilera, Álvaro
A1 Lozano-Durán, Rosa
A1 Cruzado, Lucia
A1 Rodríguez-Bejarano, Eduardo
A1 Castillo-Garriga, Araceli
K1 Inactivación génica
AB Viruses are masters at circumventing host defenses and manipulating the cellular environment for their own benefit. The replication of the largest known family of single-stranded DNA viruses, Geminiviridae, is impaired by DNA methylation but the fact that plants might use methylation as a defense against geminiviruses and the impact that viral genome methylation may have during the infection, remain controversial. We have found that geminiviruses reduce the expression of the plant maintenance DNA methyltransferases, MET1 and CMT3, in both, locally and systemically infected tissues. Furthermore, we demonstrated that the virus-mediated repression of these two maintenance DNA methyltransferases is widely spread among different geminivirus species and we have identified Rep as the geminiviral protein responsible for the repression of MET1 and CMT3. The presence of Rep, suppresses transcriptional gene silencing (TGS) of an Arabidopsis transgene and of host loci whose expression is strongly controlled by MET1. Bisulfite sequencing analyses showed that the expression of Rep caused a substantial reduction in the levels of DNA methylation at certain loci at CG sites. The biological relevance of these findings and the role of Rep as a TGS suppressor will be discussed.
YR 2015
FD 2015-10-20
LK http://hdl.handle.net/10630/10543
UL http://hdl.handle.net/10630/10543
LA eng
NO Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech.
DS RIUMA. Repositorio Institucional de la Universidad de Málaga
RD 3 mar 2026