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. 2020 Nov 12;9(11):1556.
doi: 10.3390/plants9111556.

Controlling Geminiviruses before Transmission: Prospects

Muhammad Salman Mubarik  1 , Sultan Habibullah Khan  1   2 , Aftab Ahmad  2   3 , Ali Raza  4 , Zulqurnain Khan  5 , Muhammad Sajjad  6 , Reda Helmy Ahmed Sammour  7 , Abd El-Zaher M A Mustafa  7   8 , Abdullah Ahmed Al-Ghamdi  7 , Amal H Alajmi  7 , Fatin K I Alshamasi  7 , Mohamed Soliman Elshikh  7
Affiliations

Controlling Geminiviruses before Transmission: Prospects

Muhammad Salman Mubarik et al. Plants (Basel). .

Abstract

Whitefly (Bemisia tabaci)-transmitted Geminiviruses cause serious diseases of crop plants in tropical and sub-tropical regions. Plants, animals, and their microbial symbionts have evolved complex ways to interact with each other that impact their life cycles. Blocking virus transmission by altering the biology of vector species, such as the whitefly, can be a potential approach to manage these devastating diseases. Virus transmission by insect vectors to plant hosts often involves bacterial endosymbionts. Molecular chaperonins of bacterial endosymbionts bind with virus particles and have a key role in the transmission of Geminiviruses. Hence, devising new approaches to obstruct virus transmission by manipulating bacterial endosymbionts before infection opens new avenues for viral disease control. The exploitation of bacterial endosymbiont within the insect vector would disrupt interactions among viruses, insects, and their bacterial endosymbionts. The study of this cooperating web could potentially decrease virus transmission and possibly represent an effective solution to control viral diseases in crop plants.

Keywords: geminiviruses; genetic engineering; genetically modified (GM) crops; virus transmission; whitefly.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
The transmission cycle starts with virus acquisition from the phloem of an infected plant. The virus particles (brown) move along the stylet, foregut, and esophagus and reach the midgut in whiteflies. GroEL (blue) is required for protection (blue-brown-blue), circulation, and transmission of virus particles.
Figure 2
Figure 2
The specificity and wide adaptability of the CRISPR-Cas9 system offer huge potential for GroEL gene knockout. (a,b) At its simplest, the CRISPR-Cas9 system consists of the chimeric gRNA, which guides the Cas9 endonuclease to the target site. The target site of the GroEL gene is comprised of 20-bp of homology with the gRNA and a protospacer adjacent motif (PAM) sequence. Gene knockout is based on Cas9 endonuclease activity. A pair of Cas9 cleaves the target DNA and creates double-strand breaks (DSBs) at two different sites, which results in excision of genomic DNA fragments of the GroEL gene. (c) An imprecise non-homologous end joining (NHEJ) mediated repair will join the remaining DNA fragments.
Figure 3
Figure 3
A proposed strategy to knockdown virus transmission by whitefly with the CRISPRCas9 system and RNA interference (RNAi) approach. (a) Feed coated with dsRNA, producing engineered bacterial endosymbionts (green particles) and the knockout/mutated GroEL gene, containing engineered bacterial endosymbiont (blue particles). (b) Whitefly ingesting engineered bacterial endosymbionts expressing dsRNA to evoke the RNAi mechanism to knockdown the GroEL mRNA produced by endosymbiotic bacteria. (c) Whitefly-feasting engineered bacterial endosymbionts with GroEL knockout or mutant protein expression. (d) Virus particles in whitefly gut/hemolymph from infected plants. (e) Mutated GroEL protein, which is unable to protect virus particles. (f) Virus particles would be rapidly degraded by proteolysis in the gut/hemolymph by the whitefly immune system.
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