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Poster

Session: Session 1 Presenting Authors at Posters (Odds)

P-243 - Exploring the roles of vesicle trafficking pathways in geminiviral infection

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

Geminiviruses constitute the main family of DNA viruses in plants worldwide and pose a severe threat to agronomically relevant crops such as tomato in tropical and warm regions. These viruses heavily rely on host cell machinery and co-opt multiple biological pathways to complete all the processes required for infection, such as viral replication or movement. While geminiviruses are known to move from cell to cell through plasmodesmata (Breves et al., 2023), we lack a clear understanding of how these viruses spread systemically in the plant.

In this work we will show that the silencing by VIGS (virus-induced gene silencing) of eight key vesicle trafficking genes revealed contrasting outcomes on geminivirus infection, depending on the targeted gene. Moreover, we have detected, amplified, and sequenced viral DNA sequences present in the apoplast of infected plants. In animals, extracellular vesicles (EVs) facilitate viral transmission within the host and across species though in plants, this phenomenon has only been described for one RNA virus, Turnip mosaic virus (TuMV) (Movahed et al., 2019). Our data opens the possibility that geminiviruses might be transported by apoplastic EVs.