Sweet potato (Ipomoea batatas) and related Ipomoea species are frequently infected by monopartite begomoviruses (genus Begomovirus, family Geminiviridae), known as sweepoviruses. Unlike other geminiviruses, the genomes of sweepoviruses have been recalcitrant to rendering infectious clones to date. Thus, Koch's postulates have not been fullfilled for any of the viruses in this group. Three novel...

Sweet potatoes (Ipomea batatas L.) are grown extensively, in tropical and temperate regions, and are important food crops worldwide. In Korea, potyviruses, including Sweet potato feathery mottle virus (SPFMV), Sweet potato virus C (SPVC), Sweet potato virus G (SPVG), Sweet potato virus 2 (SPV2), and Sweet potato latent virus (SPLV), have been detected in sweet potato fields at a high (~95%) inc...

Potato virus Y (PVY) is an important plant virus and causes great losses every year. Viral infection often leads to abnormal chloroplasts. The first step of chloroplast division is the formation of FtsZ ring (Z-ring), and the placement of Z-ring is coordinated by the Min system in both bacteria and plants. In our lab, the helper-component proteinase (HC-Pro) of PVY was previously found to inter...

One of the most efficient mechanisms by which plants protect themselves from invading virusesis the specific RNA-dependent silencing pathway termed post-transcriptional gene silencing(PTGS). In this mechanism, resistance to a virus is engineered through the expression of asegment of the virus genomein transgenic plants. Potato VirusY (PVY) is one of the mostdamaging viruses of potato, infecting...

Plant viruses are submitted to narrow population bottlenecks both during infection of their hosts and during horizontal transmission between host individuals. The size of bottlenecks exerted on virus populations during plant invasion has been estimated in a few pathosystems but is not addressed yet for horizontal transmission. Using competition for aphid transmission between two Potato virus Y ...