U.S.-U.K. Cooperative Research: Structural Studies of Furoviruses

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This three-year award supports U.S.-U.K. collaboration between Gerald J. Stubbs of Vanderbilt University and T. Michael Wilson of the Crop Research Institute in Scotland. the objective of their research is to determine the three- dimensional structure of furoviruses in molecular detail. The project is related to Dr. Stubbs research on the structure of a wide variety of different, unrelated helical plant viruses. Furoviruses have unique genetic structures, viral host interactions and transmission modes, and low levels of coat protein sequence homology with other viruses. Sequence comparisons indicate that furovirus RNA binding is very different from that of other helical viruses. The structures of these viruses will be important in understanding the nature of host-viral interactions, specificity, vector transmission, and protein-nucleic acid interactions. The U.S. investigator brings to this collaboration his expertise in structural biology. This is complemented by the U.K. investigator's expertise in virology and his research on furoviruses. The project will advance our understanding of the molecular structures of helical plant viruses and will eventually be used in applied studies of disease resistant plants.