Recent Advances in Plant Virus Life Cycle, Molecular Diagnosis, Virus–Host Interactions and Molecular Farming
A special issue of International Journal of Molecular Sciences (ISSN 1422-0067). This special issue belongs to the section "Molecular Plant Sciences".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: 30 October 2026 | Viewed by 156
Editor
Interests: plant viruses; plant viral diseases; genetic engineering; plant viral nanoparticles (VNPs) and virus-like particles (VLPs); disease resistance; molecular farming
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
Plant viruses are obligate intracellular pathogens, and they pose a major risk of pathogenicity and are responsible for the rampant spread of diseases in crops, greatly impacting agriculture on a global scale. Studying plant virus molecular biology is vital, as it directly affects food security world-wide, in addition to providing in-depth insights into underlying biological processes. The life cycle of plant viruses consists of attachment, penetration, uncoating, and gene expression/replication, assembly and release, followed by cell-to-cell transmission and systemic trafficking and subsequent spread to other plants mediated via mechanical transmission or insect vectors, while hijacking the host cell machinery to propagate. Identifying the infection and pathogenesis mechanisms of plant viruses is essential for developing efficacious defense strategies, formulating rapid and accurate diagnostic tools that enable early detection, deciphering how plant viruses hijack the host cellular machinery and devising genetic engineering strategies for editing crop genomes, rendering them resistant to viral infection without excessive chemical pesticide use. Plant viruses are detected via varied diagnostic bioassays, immunoassays and nucleic acid assays, such as PCR/RT-PCR, NGS and nucleic acid hybridization, which are extremely sensitive and specific for particular viruses. Increasingly, plant viruses are characterized using structural biology techniques such as X-ray crystallography and cryo-electron microscopy to decipher viral symmetries involved in the packaging of their genetic material. Such studies are fundamental for discerning the mechanisms of viral entry, host infection and assembly.
Most plant viruses are RNA viruses, and, therefore, plant virology has played a major role in several discoveries in RNA biology. RNA silencing and RNA interference attributed to plant virus–host interactions are now considered standard tools for genetic therapy and research. Due to their molecular simplicity, plant viruses form efficient probes to explicate the cellular functions of host plants such as gene expression, defense signaling, protein trafficking, and stress responses. On the other hand, rather than being considered mere threats to agriculture, the re-engineering of plant viruses into highly sophisticated, cost-efficient and safe tools has led to their use as vaccines and drug delivery tools, along with as plant molecular farming vectors for producing industrial enzymes, pharmaceuticals and monoclonal antibodies on a large scale at low cost. Most plant viral capsid proteins are inherently capable of self-assembly, enabling scientists to construct biological nanoparticles and nanocages to deliver chemotherapeutic drugs, imaging agents and vaccines to directly target cells in the human body.
This Special Issue, entitled, “Recent Advances in Plant Virus Life Cycle, Molecular Diagnosis, Virus–Host Interactions and Molecular Farming”, addresses recent advancements in the molecular biology, diagnosis, plant virus–host/interactions and 3D architecture of plant viruses to explicate their molecular structure and devise intervention/genetic engineering measures. It also addresses the applications of plant viruses in molecular farming. The submission of original high-quality research articles and review papers, focusing on the above topics, particularly recently emerging or re-emerging viruses, would be most welcome. We look forward to receiving your contributions.
Dr. Srividhya Venkataraman
Guest Editor
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Keywords
- plant viruses
- molecular biology
- replication
- assembly
- transmission
- trafficking
- virus–host interactions
- plant defense responses
- molecular diagnostics
- RNA silencing structure
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