Innovation Pipeline

Viruses are known for their ability to marshal extraordinary forces of manipulation. One of those forces is the ability to exchange genes between different viruses and that’s what has plant scientists intrigued by possibilities for new ways to improve crop yields.

An interdisciplinary group of researchers from Vanderbilt University have discovered new insights about the structure of what many scientists consider the most destructive group of plant viruses, known as filamentous viruses.

They have engineered molecules with a viral structure that neutralizes the viruses’ ability to infect plants. Some potential ideas are to use the viral pathway to introduce new genes, capable of instructing plants to make other products like antibiotics or drugs.

Or scientists think they could coat specific protein genes into a plant to protect it from viral and insect attacks. Yet another possible application would be to use modified viruses to introduce genes that instruct plants to make other useful products — for example, antibiotics or other drugs.

The researchers found that the external protein coats of the two viruses are extremely similar even though they come from two different viral families, Potyviridae and Flexiviridae. The research work took five years to complete because of the various imaging technologies required to catch a glimpse of the structural similarities.

Because the virus structures are too small for optical microscopy, the scientists used a combination of cryoelectron microscopy from Vanderbilt and x-ray diffraction from labs at Argonne National Labs along with scanning transmission electron microscopy at Brookhaven in order to identify the two structures.

The findings were published in the October 1 issue of the Journal of Virology