Special Seminar: Calmodulin-like (CML) protein-mediated plant counter defense against viral RNA silencing suppressors

Special Seminar

Professor Kenji Nakahara

Pathogen-Plant Interactions Group, Research Faculty of Agriculture, Hokkaido University, Sapporo, Hokkaido 060-8589, Japan

“Calmodulin-like (CML) protein-mediated plant counter defense against viral RNA silencing suppressors”

Abstract:

RNA silencing is one of the major antiviral systems in plants and most plant viruses encode RNA silencing suppressors (RSS) to facilitate their infection of plants by inhibiting the plant’s endogenous antiviral RNA silencing machinery. Previously, a tobacco calmodulin-like protein (CML) has been reported to interact with HC-Pro and 2b, which are RSSs encoded by members of the genus Potyvirus and Cucumovirus, respectively. We have shown that the tobacco CML, which was named rgs-CaM, counteractively functions as an antiviral defense factor to direct degradation of its interacting RSS proteins via autophagy. Further studies suggest that the rgs-CaM-mediated counterdefense against RSSs involves salicylic acid signaling. Plants encode dozens of CMLs (50 and 32 CMLs in Arabidopsis and rice, respectively). Several CMLs of tobacco and other plants are similar to rgs-CaM in their amino acid sequences, suggesting possible binding to viral RSSs and involvement with antiviral defense too. We are now studying them with the Snedden lab at Queen’s University and so far getting some results presenting in this talk.

Jeon et al., (2017) J.Virol

Friday, August 16th, 2019

11:00 a.m

Earth Sciences, Room ES3087 

Host: Prof. Keiko Yoshioka