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Poster

Session: Session 1 Presenting Authors at Posters (Odds)

P-265 - Viral manipulation of lipid droplets: insights from turnip mosaic virus infection in plants

Monday, July 14, 2025
13:30 - 15:15  
Location: Confex Hall 3
Plant-virus Interactions (incl. Viromes, Evolution & Vectors)

Over the past decade, several studies have demonstrated that positive single stranded RNA viruses extensively manipulate the host's lipid metabolism and use lipid droplets (LDs) to promote viral replication and assembly in animal systems. LDs are dynamic organelles with a core of neutral lipids and a phospholipid monolayer, associated with enzymes and structural proteins. LDs regulate cellular homeostasis, playing crucial roles in lipid metabolism, energy storage and signal transduction. Recent studies suggest that LDs may play a role in plant responses to viral infection, but the mechanisms behind LDs involvement in plant-virus interactions are still unknown. We report here for the first time an accumulation of LDs upon infection by turnip mosaic virus (TuMV, a member of the Potyvirus genus) in Arabidopsis thaliana and Nicotiana benthamiana. Confocal and electron microscopy analyses demonstrate that these LDs are induced and recruited to viral replication compartments during infection. Consistently, a significant increase of neutral lipids was observed in TuMV-infected leaves in Nicotiana benthamiana, supporting the premise that TuMV-infection induces LD biogenesis. In order to further decipher the role of LDs upon TuMV infection, we performed propagation assays in various Arabidopsis thaliana mutants affected in their LDs biogenesis and noticed that TuMV propagation was delayed in those mutants. These results provide the first evidence of a pro-viral role of LDs in plants.