Protein-protein interactions in mono- and bi-partite geminiviruses: functional analysis and use of aptamers for plant protection

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This proposal represents a continuation of our ongoing efforts to study, identify and characterize the molecular components and the processes involved in infection, spread and pathogenicity of plant ssDNA viruses from the Geminiviridae family: Tomato yellow leaf curl virus (TYLCV), Watermelone chlorotic stunt virus (WmCSV), and Indian cassava mosaic virus (ICMV). The information gained will be used to develop novel strategies to render plants resistant to geminivirus infection. This will be achieved by expressing inhibitory peptides in planta that will interfere with inter- and intracellular movement of geminiviral proteins. A random peptide library and the yeast two hybrid (Hoppe-Seyler et al., 2004) as well as the reverse two-hybrid (Barr et al., 2004) systems will be used to select such inhibitory peptides. Indeed, we have already succeeded, using Y2H system in selecting a peptide that inhibits virus replication (HIV-l) in cultured cells (Armon-Omer et al., 2007). The same strategy will be used by us in the present project Engineering of virus-resistant transgenic plants by expressing dominant interfering peptides (aptamers) was described recently as a novel and feasible approach in order to control an RNA virus infection (Rudolph et a/., 2003) as well as the replication of a geminivirus (Lopez-Ochoa et aly 2006). Here, we propose to exploit our knowledge on the use of random peptide libraries and on the interactions of geminivirus proteins to generate inhibitory peptides to obtain virus resistant plants.