Scientific Reports (May 2023)

Visual tracking of viral infection dynamics reveals the synergistic interactions between cucumber mosaic virus and broad bean wilt virus 2

  • Min-Jun Kwon,
  • Sun-Jung Kwon,
  • Myung-Hwi Kim,
  • Boram Choi,
  • Hee-Seong Byun,
  • Hae-Ryun Kwak,
  • Jang-Kyun Seo

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-023-34553-6
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 13, no. 1
pp. 1 – 14

Abstract

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Abstract Cucumber mosaic virus (CMV) is one of the most prevalent plant viruses in the world, and causes severe damage to various crops. CMV has been studied as a model RNA virus to better understand viral replication, gene functions, evolution, virion structure, and pathogenicity. However, CMV infection and movement dynamics remain unexplored due to the lack of a stable recombinant virus tagged with a reporter gene. In this study, we generated a CMV infectious cDNA construct tagged with a variant of the flavin-binding LOV photoreceptor (iLOV). The iLOV gene was stably maintained in the CMV genome after more than four weeks of three serial passages between plants. Using the iLOV-tagged recombinant CMV, we visualized CMV infection and movement dynamics in living plants in a time course manner. We also examined whether CMV infection dynamics is influenced by co-infection with broad bean wilt virus 2 (BBWV2). Our results revealed that no spatial interference occurred between CMV and BBWV2. Specifically, BBWV2 facilitated the cell-to-cell movement of CMV in the upper young leaves. In addition, the BBWV2 accumulation level increased after co-infection with CMV.