Coat protein is responsible for tomato leaf curl New Delhi virus pathogenicity in tomato

Thuy T B Vo; Aamir Lal; Bupi Nattanong; Marjia Tabassum; Muhammad Amir Qureshi; Elisa Troiano; Giuseppe Parrella; Eui-Joon Kil; Sukchan Lee

doi:10.3389/fpls.2023.1206255

Coat protein is responsible for tomato leaf curl New Delhi virus pathogenicity in tomato

Front Plant Sci. 2023 Jul 10:14:1206255. doi: 10.3389/fpls.2023.1206255. eCollection 2023.

Authors

Thuy T B Vo¹, Aamir Lal², Bupi Nattanong¹, Marjia Tabassum¹, Muhammad Amir Qureshi¹, Elisa Troiano³, Giuseppe Parrella³, Eui-Joon Kil^{2

4}, Sukchan Lee¹

Affiliations

¹ Department of Integrative Biotechnology, Sungkyunkwan University, Suwon, Republic of Korea.
² Agriculture Science and Technology Research Institute, Andong National University, Andong, Republic of Korea.
³ Department of Biology, Agriculture and Food Sciences, Institute for Sustainable Plant Protection of the National Research Council (IPSP-CNR), Portici, Italy.
⁴ Department of Plant Medicals, Andong National University, Andong, Republic of Korea.

Abstract

Tomato leaf curl New Delhi virus (ToLCNDV), a bipartite Begomovirus belonging to the family Geminiviridae, causes severe damage to many economically important crops worldwide. In the present study, pathogenicity of Asian (ToLCNDV-In from Pakistan) and Mediterranean isolates (ToLCNDV-ES from Italy) were examined using infectious clones in tomato plants. Only ToLCNDV-In could infect the three tomato cultivars, whereas ToLCNDV-ES could not. Genome-exchange of the two ToLCNDVs revealed the ToLCNDV DNA-A segment as the main factor for ToLCNDV infectivity in tomato. In addition, serial clones with chimeric ToLCNDV-In A and ToLCNDV-ES A genome segments were generated to identify the region determining viral infectivity in tomatoes. A chimeric clone carrying the ToLCNDV-In coat protein (CP) exhibited pathogenic adaptation in tomatoes, indicating that the CP of ToLCNDV is essential for its infectivity. Analyses of infectious clones carrying a single amino acid substitution revealed that amino acid at position 143 of the CP is critical for ToLCNDV infectivity in tomatoes. To better understand the molecular basis whereby CP function in pathogenicity, a yeast two-hybrid screen of a tomato cDNA library was performed using CPs as bait. The hybrid results showed different interactions between the two CPs and Ring finger protein 44-like in the tomato genome. The relative expression levels of upstream and downstream genes and Ring finger 44-like genes were measured using quantitative reverse transcription PCR (RT-qPCR) and compared to those of control plants. This is the first study to compare the biological features of the two ToLCNDV strains related to viral pathogenicity in the same host plant. Our results provide a foundation for elucidating the molecular mechanisms underlying ToLCNDV infection in tomatoes.

Keywords: ToLCNDV strain; coat protein; host interaction; infectivity assay; mutant infectious clones.

Grants and funding

This research was supported by the National Research Foundation of Korea grand funded by the Korea government (MSIT) (NRF-2023R1A2C1006882) and by Basic science Research Program through the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) funded by the Ministry of Education (NRF-2020R1I1A3071232).