Interactions between Plant Cell and Virus

Dear Colleagues,

Plant viruses are a major cause of immense economic losses in crops. As viruses are intracellular parasites, it is difficult to develop cost-effective virucides for the management of plant viral diseases. Since viruses consist of small genomes and encode limited proteins, they rely on hijacking host machinery to complete their life cycle. In contrast, plant cells can sense virus infections, and they trigger a cascade of immune responses to ward off these virus infections. As a counter defense, viruses have also evolved strategies to compromise plant immune responses to enable successful infection. Expanding the knowledge regarding the mechanism of interactions between plant cells and viruses will certainly aid us in developing effective antiviral strategies for crops. 

In addition to developing antiviral strategies, the knowledge regarding interactions between plant cells and viruses can also aid scientists in developing robust viral expression vectors, which can be used to express valuable proteins, using the plant as a bioreactor. In addition, plant viral vectors can also be used to induce gene silencing in plants. A virus-induced gene silencing system offers several advantages for gene functional analysis, and has been proven to be a valuable tool for gene functional analysis in the post-genomic era, especially for the analysis of genes in crops that have difficulty transforming and/or regenerating.

This Special Issue focuses on all aspects of plant cell–virus interactions, and we aim to collect inspiring articles in this field. We sincerely invite you to submit a manuscript to this Special Issue, in the form of methods, original researches, or reviews.

Dr. Björn Krenz
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Viruses is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• plant cell and virus interaction
• plant immunity
• antiviral strategies
• RNA interference
• virus replication
• virus movement
• disease management