Department of Biology, University of Crete, Vassilika Vouton, 71409 Heraklion, Greece
Charith Raj Adkar-Purushothama
RNA Group/Groupe ARN, Département de Biochimie, Faculté de Médecine des Sciences de la Santé, Pavillon de Recherche Appliquée au Cancer, Université de Sherbrooke, Sherbrooke, QC J1E 4K8, Canada
Emilios Tassios
Department of Biology, University of Crete, Vassilika Vouton, 71409 Heraklion, Greece
Martina Samiotaki
Biomedical Sciences Research Center “Alexander Fleming”, Institute for Bioinnovation, 16672 Vari, Greece
Christos Andronis
Institute of Molecular Biology and Biotechnology, Foundation for Research and Technology, 71110 Heraklion, Greece
Purificación Lisón
Instituto de Biología Molecular y Celular de Plantas (IBMCP), Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC), Universitat Politècnica de València (UPV), Ciudad Politécnica de la Innovación (CPI) 8 E, Ingeniero Fausto Elio s/n, 46011 Valencia, Spain
Christoforos Nikolaou
Department of Biology, University of Crete, Vassilika Vouton, 71409 Heraklion, Greece
Jean-Pierre Perreault
RNA Group/Groupe ARN, Département de Biochimie, Faculté de Médecine des Sciences de la Santé, Pavillon de Recherche Appliquée au Cancer, Université de Sherbrooke, Sherbrooke, QC J1E 4K8, Canada
Kriton Kalantidis
Department of Biology, University of Crete, Vassilika Vouton, 71409 Heraklion, Greece
Viroids are small, circular, highly structured pathogens that infect a broad range of plants, causing economic losses. Since their discovery in the 1970s, they have been considered as non-coding pathogens. In the last few years, the discovery of other RNA entities, similar in terms of size and structure, that were shown to be translated (e.g., cirRNAs, precursors of miRNA, RNA satellites) as well as studies showing that some viroids are located in ribosomes, have reignited the idea that viroids may be translated. In this study, we used advanced bioinformatic analysis, in vitro experiments and LC-MS/MS to search for small viroid peptides of the PSTVd. Our results suggest that in our experimental conditions, even though the circular form of PSTVd is found in ribosomes, no produced peptides were identified. This indicates that the presence of PSTVd in ribosomes is most probably not related to peptide production but rather to another unknown function that requires further study.
