Targets and Mechanisms of Geminivirus Silencing Suppressor Protein AC2

Karuppannan Veluthambi; Sukumaran Sunitha

doi:10.3389/fmicb.2021.645419

Targets and Mechanisms of Geminivirus Silencing Suppressor Protein AC2

Front Microbiol. 2021 Apr 9:12:645419. doi: 10.3389/fmicb.2021.645419. eCollection 2021.

Authors

Karuppannan Veluthambi¹, Sukumaran Sunitha²

Affiliations

¹ Department of Plant Biotechnology, School of Biotechnology, Madurai Kamaraj University, Madurai, India.
² Department of Biological Sciences, Texas Tech University, Lubbock, TX, United States.

Abstract

Geminiviruses are plant DNA viruses that infect a wide range of plant species and cause significant losses to economically important food and fiber crops. The single-stranded geminiviral genome encodes a small number of proteins which act in an orchestrated manner to infect the host. The fewer proteins encoded by the virus are multifunctional, a mechanism uniquely evolved by the viruses to balance the genome-constraint. The host-mediated resistance against incoming virus includes post-transcriptional gene silencing, transcriptional gene silencing, and expression of defense responsive genes and other cellular regulatory genes. The pathogenicity property of a geminiviral protein is linked to its ability to suppress the host-mediated defense mechanism. This review discusses what is currently known about the targets and mechanism of the viral suppressor AC2/AL2/transcriptional activator protein (TrAP) and explore the biotechnological applications of AC2.

Keywords: AC2/C2; biopharming; geminivirus; genome-editing; silencing suppressor; suppressor protein; transcriptional activator.

Publication types

Review