Academic Research

Professor Chung-Chi Hu and his team discovered that the Argonaute protein NbAGO5 in tobacco is upregulated after viral infection and plays antiviral roles against Bamboo mosaic virus (BaMV), Potato virus X (PVX), Tobacco mosaic virus (TMV), and a 2b-deficient mutant of Cucumber mosaic virus (CMV_2bm). The study further showed that CMV 2b protein and Turnip mosaic virus (TuMV) HC-Pro can interact with NbAGO5 and trigger its degradation through the 26S proteasome and autophagy pathways, revealing the complex interplay between plant antiviral defense and viral counter-defense. The study was published in Virus Research (Tu et al., 2023).

Article source: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0168170223001417