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Arabidopsism6A demethylase activity modulates viral infection of a plant virus and the m6A abundance in its genomic RNAs
- Source :
- Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 114:10755-10760
- Publication Year :
- 2017
- Publisher :
- Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2017.
-
Abstract
- N6-methyladenosine (m6A) is an internal, reversible nucleotide modification that constitutes an important regulatory mechanism in RNA biology. Unlike mammals and yeast, no component of the m6A cellular machinery has been described in plants at present. m6A has been identified in the genomic RNAs of diverse mammalian viruses and, additionally, viral infection was found to be modulated by the abundance of m6A in viral RNAs. Here we show that the Arabidopsis thaliana protein atALKBH9B (At2g17970) is a demethylase that removes m6A from single-stranded RNA molecules in vitro. atALKBH9B accumulates in cytoplasmic granules, which colocalize with siRNA bodies and associate with P bodies, suggesting that atALKBH9B m6A demethylase activity could be linked to mRNA silencing and/or mRNA decay processes. Moreover, we identified the presence of m6A in the genomes of two members of the Bromoviridae family, alfalfa mosaic virus (AMV) and cucumber mosaic virus (CMV). The demethylation activity of atALKBH9B affected the infectivity of AMV but not of CMV, correlating with the ability of atALKBH9B to interact (or not) with their coat proteins. Suppression of atALKBH9B increased the relative abundance of m6A in the AMV genome, impairing the systemic invasion of the plant, while not having any effect on CMV infection. Our findings suggest that, as recently found in animal viruses, m6A modification may represent a plant regulatory strategy to control cytoplasmic-replicating RNA viruses.
- Subjects :
- 0106 biological sciences
0301 basic medicine
Genetics
Multidisciplinary
biology
viruses
fungi
food and beverages
RNA
Biological Sciences
biology.organism_classification
01 natural sciences
Cucumber mosaic virus
03 medical and health sciences
030104 developmental biology
Alfalfa mosaic virus
Plant virus
P-bodies
Demethylase activity
biology.protein
Demethylase
Bromoviridae
010606 plant biology & botany
Subjects
Details
- ISSN :
- 10916490 and 00278424
- Volume :
- 114
- Database :
- OpenAIRE
- Journal :
- Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
- Accession number :
- edsair.doi.dedup.....e6c298fff3b9413a478e2a33ef33a9e3