ECA-PGR: Transcriptional Regulation and Gene Networks Underlying Viral Recognition of Insect Vectors in Host Plants

农作物的病毒感染会造成作物产量的重大损失。尽管对植物与病毒相互作用的研究已经进行了一个多世纪，但病毒感染的控制仍然是对植物健康的一个挑战。与大多数细菌和真菌植物害虫不同，大多数病毒依靠昆虫作为“载体”将病毒传播到植物细胞，通常是通过吸吮口器。因此，一种复杂的三方关系发展起来，在这种关系中，寄主植物产生免疫反应，被病毒及其昆虫载体反击。因此，了解这种三方相互作用如何以及何时发生，对于确定病毒性疾病的控制点至关重要。本研究计划的目标是调查植物对感染的反应，并揭示驱动番茄植物-病毒-昆虫相互作用的独特基因和生化途径。该结果将为病毒管理的工程新策略提供候选基因，并将建立番茄-痘病毒-蚜虫系统作为研究三方疾病相互作用的模型。该研究还为如何在驯化和野生番茄内部和之间介导病毒疾病的自然变异提供了新的见解。高中生和本科生将直接参与研究，了解植物病毒病背后的基因组水平科学。该项目还将通过在加州大学戴维斯分校举办一个专注于植物基因组学研究的夏季讨论小组，鼓励植物基因组学领域的跨学科交流。几乎每一个主要的种植系统都面临着植物感染病毒的威胁，而大多数植物病毒依靠昆虫媒介传播。尽管许多研究表明病毒可以操纵植物代谢，通过载体促进病毒的获取和传播，但很少有人研究介导植物-病毒-载体相互作用的潜在分子机制，也没有人对这一过程有系统水平的了解。这项工作建立在最近发现的基础上，植物病毒通过宿主植物来源的信号积极响应昆虫载体的存在，通过植物化学的变化促进昆虫的表现和传播。该项目的目的是详细了解病毒对昆虫媒介的“识别”以及宿主植物中促进昆虫媒介传播的激活过程的基因和途径。转录谱分析、代谢组学和生物信息学将用于开发共同表达网络，并确定这一现象的关键调节因子。与基因敲除相结合的基因渗入图谱将用于功能表征植物物种内部和物种间介导植物-病毒-载体相互作用的关键调控因子。本项目产生的所有数据和资源将通过项目网站和长期数据存储库向公众开放。

Viral infections in crop plants can cause major losses in crop productivity. Despite more than a century of research on plant-virus interactions, control of viral infection remains a challenge to plant health. Unlike most bacterial and fungal plant pests, most viruses depend on insects who serve as "vectors" to transmit the virus to the plant cell, often through sucking mouthparts. Thus, a complex three-way relationship develops in which the host plant mounts an immune response that is countered by the virus and its insect vector. Understanding how and when this three-way interaction occurs is thus essential to identify control points of the viral disease. The goals of this research program are to investigate plant responses to infection and to uncover unique collections of genes and biochemical pathways that drive plant-virus-insect interactions in tomato. The results will provide candidate genes for engineering new strategies of virus management, and will establish the tomato-Potyvirus-aphid system as a model for studying three-way disease interactions. The research also provides novel insight into how the natural variation of viral disease is mediated within and across domesticated and wild tomato. High school and undergraduate students will participate directly in research to learn about the genomic-level science underlying viral disease in plants. The project will also encourage cross-disciplinary communication in plant genomics by hosting a summer discussion group at the University of California-Davis focused on plant genomics research.Nearly every major cropping system faces threats from plant-infecting viruses, and most plant viruses rely on insect vectors for transmission. Although numerous studies have shown that viruses can manipulate plant metabolism to promote viral acquisition and transmission by vectors, few have examined the underlying molecular mechanisms mediating plant-virus-vector interactions and none have developed a system-level understanding of this process. This work builds on the recent discovery that plant viruses respond actively to the presence of insect vectors via host plant-derived signals, promoting insect performance and transmission through changes in plant chemistry. The aim of this project is to develop a detailed understanding of the genes and pathways that underlie viral "recognition" of insect vectors and activation of processes within the host plant that facilitate transmission by insect vectors. Transcript profiling, metabolomics, and bioinformatics will be used to develop a co-expression network and identify key regulators of this phenomenon. Introgression-mapping lines in combination with knockouts will be used to functionally characterize key regulators mediating plant-virus-vector interactions within and across plant species. All data and resources generated in this project will be made accessible to the public through the project website and through long-term data repositories.