CoE/ViPS Invited Seminar April 2025

Anders Hafren, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SLU) Uppsala Biocenter, Sweden

Date: 16th April 2025

Time: 13:00

Title: Plant virus interactions – what´s the viroplasm of cauliflower mosaic virus?

Location: Seminar room K1088, Viikki Info Centre, Viikinkaari 9

Host: Kristiina Mäkinen

Abstract: Plant viruses multiply themselves in intracellular milieus, in a process relying on a minimal number of viral proteins as well as a plethora of co-opted plant proteins of diverse cellular pathways. The versality, importance and unknowns of these interactions in infection processes and disease outcomes is evident from state-of-the-art, and represents the major focus of my research group. In this presentation, I will focus on RNA regulative/dependent processes in the infection cycle of a very longstanding plant virus model, Cauliflower mosaic virus (CaMV), including viral RNA translation and virus factory condensation biology. Generally, post-transcriptional regulation involves many distinct processes that influence RNA stability and translation. Some of these processes appear to be influenced by biomolecular condensations characterized as membrane-less organelles that assemble through liquid-liquid phase separation in an RNA-binding-protein- and RNA-dependent manner. While our insights into the specific function of these diverse condensates are continuously increasing, they have remained enigmatic especially regarding functional consequences of the condensation process itself. Already 50 years ago, CaMV infection was observed to result in massive RNA-protein rich condensates in plants, followed by functional associations and assumptions over the years. Understanding the causes and consequences of CaMV viroplasm condensation has been of particular interest to us. In our past work, we have discovered connections between components of canonical plant mRNA condensates and CaMV viroplasm (Hoffmann et al., 2022, 2023). Our following work has deepened our functional understanding of this process, together outlining the context of my presentation.

Anders' team devotes their research to processes influencing viral diseases in plants, with emphasis on the molecular mechanisms behind plant and virus performance. Their research is done in the Arabidopsis plant model and is coarsely focused on cellular processes of protein homeostasis and RNA. The future aim is to increasingly understand how these different processes intersect as well as increase their approaches involving plant genetic variation and comparative virology for broader perspectives.      

Read more about Anders' work

Related publications:

Hoffmann et al., 2022. Arabidopsis RNA processing body components LSM1 and DCP5 aid in the evasion of translational repression during Cauliflower mosaic virus infection. The Plant Cell. https://doi.org/10.1093/plcell/koac132

Hoffmann et al., 2023. Cauliflower mosaic virus protein P6 is a multivalent node for RNA granule proteins and interferes with stress granule responses during plant infection. https://doi.org/10.1093/plcell/koad101