Arabidopsis latent virus 1, a comovirus widely spread in Arabidopsis thaliana collections

Abstract

Transcriptome studies of Illumina RNA-seq datasets of different Arabidopsis thaliana natural accessions and T-DNA mutants revealed the presence of two virus-like RNA sequences which showed the typical two segmented genome characteristics of a comovirus. This comovirus did not induce any visible symptoms in infected Arabidopsis plants cultivated under standard laboratory conditions. Hence it was named Arabidopsis latent virus 1 (ArLV1). Virus infectivity in Arabidopsis plants was confirmed by RT-qPCR, transmission electron microscopy and mechanical inoculation. ArLV1 can also mechanically infect Nicotiana benthamiana, causing distinct mosaic symptoms. A bioinformatics investigation of Arabidopsis RNA-Seq repositories, including nearly 6500 Sequence Read Archives (SRAs) in the NCBI SRA database, revealed the presence of ArLV1 in 25% of all archived natural Arabidopsis accessions and in 8.5% of all analyzed SRAs. ArLV1 could also be detected in Arabidopsis plants collected from the wild. ArLV1 is highly seed-transmissible with up to 40% incidence on the progeny derived from infected Arabidopsis plants. This has likely led to a worldwide distribution in the model plant Arabidopsis with yet unknown effects on plant performance in a substantial number of studies.

When plants are Trojan horses for viruses

“…In this issue of New Phytologist , Verhoeven et al . (2023; pp. 1146–1153) show that, as in the Aeneid story where the horse hides Odysseus and his soldiers, asymptomatic Arabidopsis thaliana (Arabidopsis) plants may harbor latent viruses with potential significant effects on the biology of the plant.…”

“…Schematic representation of the contribution of the article published in this issue of New Phytologist by Verhoeven et al . (2023; pp. 1146–1153) to the understanding of asymptomatic plant virus infections.…”

“…Like the wooden horse left by the Greeks that entered Troy, and was apparently innocuous, new plant genotypes often incorporated by researchers into their laboratories and most new plants migrating into already existing populations look healthy. In this issue of New Phytologist, Verhoeven et al (2023;pp. 1146-1153 show that, as in the Aeneid story where the horse hides Odysseus and his soldiers, asymptomatic Arabidopsis thaliana (Arabidopsis) plants may harbor latent viruses with potential significant effects on the biology of the plant.…”

Cauliflower mosaic virusdisease spectrum uncovers novel susceptibility factor NCED9 inArabidopsis thaliana

“…Tolerance is fundamentally different from resistance and defined as a mitigation strategy aimed at minimizing cost of infection on plant growth, yield and reproduction, rather than investing resources to fight the infection by suppressing pathogen multiplication (Pagán & García-Arenal, 2020; Cooper & Jones, 1983). Tolerance mechanisms can result in high levels of virus accumulation in visible healthy plants, a powerful example being the recently reported Arabidopsis latent virus 1 that has spread through natural and laboratory populations of Arabidopsis thaliana (Arabidopsis) without detection (Verhoeven et al ., 2022). While agricultural research has historically focused on resistance to battle virus disease, evidence is accumulating that tolerance plays a pivotal role for many plant-virus interactions, especially in natural ecosystems, where most plants are infected by at least one virus at any given time but still appear healthy (Paudel & Sanfaçon, 2018; Roossinck, 2013).…”

Diversity and pathobiology of an ilarvirus unexpectedly detected in diverse host plants and in global sequencing data

“…For instance, the biological characterization of an emerging pathogen of tomato, Physostegia chlorotic mottle alphanucleorhabdovirus (family Rhabdoviridae ), was significantly accelerated through an international collaboration driven by HTS data (Temple et al 2022). Recently, mining of vast amounts of Arabidopsis thaliana publicly available sequence read archive (SRA) datasets uncovered a novel comovirus (family Secoviridae ), Arabidopsis latent virus 1, which was demonstrated to be mechanically and seed transmitted, but causes no symptoms in A. thaliana , (Verhoeven et al 2022). A recent study on Prunus -associated luteoviruses (family Luteoviridae ) also uncovered a new luteovirus through a search of SRA datasets (Khalili et al 2022).…”