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HC-Pro protein of sugar cane mosaic virus interacts specifically with maize ferredoxin-5 in vitro and in planta

Yu-Qin Cheng^1,2,

Zhong-Mei Liu^1,

Jian Xu^3,

Tao Zhou^1,

¹ Department of Plant Pathology and State Key Laboratory of Agro-Biotechnology, China Agricultural University, Beijing 100094, PR China
² Department of Pomology, China Agricultural University, Beijing 100094, PR China
³ Department of Plant Science and Technology, Beijing University of Agriculture, Beijing 102206, PR China

Correspondence
Zai-Feng Fan
virology{at}cau.edu.cn
or
fanzf{at}cau.edu.cn

Symptom development of a plant viral disease is a result of molecular interactions between the virus and its host plant; thus, the elucidation of specific interactions is a prerequisite to reveal the mechanism of viral pathogenesis. Here, we show that the chloroplast precursor of ferredoxin-5 (Fd V) from maize (Zea mays) interacts with the multifunctional HC-Pro protein of sugar cane mosaic virus (SCMV) in yeast, Nicotiana benthamiana cells and maize protoplasts. Our results demonstrate that the transit peptide rather than the mature protein of Fd V precursor could interact with both N-terminal (residues 1–100) and C-terminal (residues 301–460) fragments, but not the middle part (residues 101–300), of HC-Pro. In addition, SCMV HC-Pro interacted only with Fd V, and not with the other two photosynthetic ferredoxin isoproteins (Fd I and Fd II) from maize plants. SCMV infection significantly downregulated the level of Fd V mRNA in maize plants; however, no obvious changes were observed in levels of Fd I and Fd II mRNA. These results suggest that SCMV HC-Pro interacts specifically with maize Fd V and that this interaction may disturb the post-translational import of Fd V into maize bundle-sheath cell chloroplasts, which could lead to the perturbation of chloroplast structure and function.

These authors contributed equally to this paper.

The GenBank/EMBL/DDBJ accession numbers for the cDNA sequences of the precursors of maize ferredoxins 5, 1 and 2 reported in this paper are respectively EU328184–EU328186.

Details of PCR primers are available as supplementary material with the online version of this paper.