“…NIK homologues from arabidopsis, tomato and soybean interact with NSPs from Cabbage leaf curl virus (CaLCuV) and from tomato-infecting begomoviruses, such as Tomato golden mosaic virus (TGMV), Tomato crinkle leaf yellow virus (TCrLYV) and Tomato yellow spot virus (ToYSV) (Fontes et al, 2004;Mariano et al, 2004;Sakamoto et al, 2012). These interactions suppress the NIK kinase activity and prevent the activation of the antiviral signal transduction pathway, creating a suitable environment for begomovirus infection (Santos et al, 2009(Santos et al, , 2010. Consistent with a role for NIK in antiviral defence, loss-of-function nik1, nik2 and nik3 mutants showed enhanced susceptibility to CaLCuV infection (Fontes et al, 2004;Rocha et al, 2008;Santos et al, 2009).…”