A vertically transmitted amalgavirus is present in certain accessions of the bryophyte Physcomitrium patens

Vendrell-Mir, Pol; Perroud, Pierre-François; Haas, Fabian B.; Meyberg, Rabea; Charlot, Florence; Rensing, Stefan A.; Nogué, Fabien; Casacuberta, Josep M.; Ministerio de Economía, Industria y Competitividad; Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad; Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovación y Universidades; Agencia Estatal de Investigación; Agence Nationale de la Recherche; European Commission

A vertically transmitted amalgavirus is present in certain accessions of the bryophyte Physcomitrium patens

2021

In the last few years, next-generation sequencing techniques have started to be used to identify new viruses infecting plants. This has allowed to rapidly increase our knowledge on viruses other than those causing symptoms in economically important crops. Here we used this approach to identify a virus infecting Physcomitrium patens that has the typical structure of the double-stranded RNA endogenous viruses of the Amalgaviridae family, which we named Physcomitrium patens amalgavirus 1, or PHPAV1. PHPAV1 is present only in certain accessions of P. patens, where its RNA can be detected throughout the cell cycle of the plant. Our analysis demonstrates that PHPAV1 can be vertically transmitted through both paternal and maternal germlines, in crosses between accessions that contain the virus with accessions that do not contain it. This work suggests that PHPAV1 can replicate in genomic backgrounds different from those that actually contain the virus and opens the door for future studies on virus–host coevolution.

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This work was supported by grants from the Spanish Ministerio de Economía, Industria y Competitividad (AGL2016-78992-R/FEDER) and Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación (PID2019-106374RB-I00/AEI/10.13039/501100011033) to JMC. The IJPB benefits from the support of the LabEx Saclay Plant Sciences (SPS) (ANR-10-LABX-0040-SPS).

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Peer reviewed

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