Amino Acid Utilization May Explain Why Bemisia tabaci Q and B Differ in Their Performance on Plants Infected by the Tomato yellow leaf curl virus

Discussion Research has shown that vectored viruses can alter host plant phenotypes so as to change interactions with other organisms, including interactions between plants, viruses, and insect vectors of viruses (Mauck et al., 2012, 2018; Casteel and Falk, 2016; Eigenbrode and Bosque-Perez, 2016; Mauck, 2016). Insect-vectored viruses can alter many host plant factors, including odors, induced defenses, visual and tactile characteristics, sugars, free amino acids, and secondary metabolites (Bosque-Perez and Eigenbrode, 2011; Casteel et al., 2014; Mauck et al., 2014a,b). In our study, TYLCV significantly altered the free amino acid concentration in the phloem sap of tomato plants (Figure 1), an observation that is consistent with earlier studies on other interactions between plants and pathogens (Casteel et al., 2014; Su et al., 2015). Amino acids are important nutrients because they are required for cell growth regulation, hormone metabolism, nerve transmission, protein synthesis, the production of metabolic energy, and nitrogen metabolism (Castagna et al., 1997; Curis et al., 2007; Manna et al., 2009; Wu, 2009; Wu et al., 2014). Lys and Asn are directly related to antiviral activity and the regulation of the immune function, respectively, and Trp is the only amino acid with enhanced immune function (Wu, 2009). Posttranslational modifications of Lys are related to Leishmania survival (Nayak et al., 2018). In an earlier study, a positive correlation was observed between the n...
Source: Frontiers in Physiology - Category: Physiology Source Type: research