HOME HELP FEEDBACK SUBSCRIPTIONS ARCHIVE SEARCH TABLE OF CONTENTS		QUICK SEARCH:   [advanced] Author: Keyword(s): Year:  Vol:  Page:

This Article Full Text (PDF) Alert me when this article is cited Alert me if a correction is posted Services Email this article to a friend Similar articles in this journal Similar articles in PubMed Alert me to new issues of the journal Download to citation manager Citing Articles Citing Articles via HighWire Citing Articles via CrossRef Citing Articles via Google Scholar Google Scholar Articles by Offei, S. K. Articles by Coutts, R. H. A. Search for Related Content PubMed PubMed Citation Articles by Offei, S. K. Articles by Coutts, R. H. A. Agricola Articles by Offei, S. K. Articles by Coutts, R. H. A.

The tobacco necrosis virus p7a protein is a nucleic acid-binding protein

Biology Department, Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine, Prince Consort Road, London SW7 2BB, UK

The two centrally located open reading frames (ORFs) of necroviruses may, by analogy with the similarly located and related ORFs of carmoviruses, be expected to have a function in virus movement in plants. In the case of tobacco necrosis virus (TNV) strain D these proteins both have a molecular mass of approximately 7 kDa and are thus known as p7a and p7b. We over-expressed p7a in Escherichia coli, separated it from bacterial proteins and renatured it on gels, and showed that p7a was able to bind single-stranded RNA and single-stranded DNA, but was unable to bind double-stranded DNA. These protein-nucleic acid complexes were stable at moderately high salt concentrations. Protein p7b could not be expressed in a number of bacterial systems. We speculate that in TNV, unlike some other viruses which encode a single movement protein with separate functional domains for RNA binding and plasmodesmatal targeting, p7a and p7b may respectively provide these functions on separate proteins.

^* Author for correspondence. Fax +44 171 584 2056. e-mail r.coutts@ic.ac.uk

Received 8 November 1994; accepted 6 February 1995.

This article has been cited by other articles:

				X. Yuan, Y. Cao, D. Xi, L. Guo, C. Han, D. Li, Y. Zhai, and J. Yu Analysis of the subgenomic RNAs and the small open reading frames of Beet black scorch virus. J. Gen. Virol., October 1, 2006; 87(Pt 10): 3077 - 3086. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]