Academic Research

Professor Ching-Hsiu Tsai and his team discovered that the Bamboo mosaic virus (BaMV) movement protein TGBp3 interacts with NbBiP4 and NbCRT3 in Nicotiana benthamiana, thereby promoting the transport of BaMV movement complexes along the endoplasmic reticulum or ER-derived vesicles to plasmodesmata at the cell periphery. This process enhances the cell-to-cell spread and infection efficiency of BaMV. Although BiP and CRT have long been regarded as molecular chaperones associated with endoplasmic reticulum stress responses, this study further revealed their critical roles in intracellular viral transport. These findings provide important new insight into the efficient intracellular movement mechanisms of plant viruses. The study was published in Plant Physiology (Huang et al., 2023).

Article source: https://academic.oup.com/plphys/article/191/2/904/6865293