J Gen Virol 90 (2009), 1549-1550; DOI 10.1099/vir.0.013136-0
IMMEDIATE OPEN ACCESS ARTICLE
In memoriam – Rob W. Goldbach (1949–2009)
Rob W. Goldbach, Professor of Virology, Wageningen University, Wageningen, The Netherlands, died on 7 April 2009, after an accident during a bird-watching excursion in Kaziranga National Park, India.
Rob was born on 9 August 1949. After finishing high school, he enrolled at Utrecht University to study Biology. During his MSc study, he carried two majors, one of which was in Biochemistry under the supervision of Professor Ben de Kruijff, which earned him a co-authorship on a highly cited publication [de Kruyff, B., et al. (1973). Biochim Biophys Acta 330, 269–282]. After his MSc, Rob started his PhD study on the ‘Structure and replication of Tetrahymena pyriformis mitochondrial DNA’ at the University of Amsterdam, Netherlands Cancer Institute–Antonie van Leeuwenhoek Hospital, under the supervision of Professor Piet Borst. T. pyriformis is a free-living ciliate protozoa that can easily switch between a commensal and a pathogenic lifestyle. His PhD research led to seven scientific publications in Biochim Biophys Acta (six) and Nucleic Acids Res (one). After completion of his PhD thesis in 1978, Rob was appointed Assistant Professor at the Laboratory of Molecular Biology of Wageningen University and worked in the Plant Virology group of Professor Ab van Kammen. They studied cowpea mosaic virus (CPMV) and, between 1978 and 1986, Rob made seminal contributions to the mechanism of replication of CPMV. The use of a cowpea protoplast system also provided new approaches to address the molecular mechanisms of host plant infection. The CPMV genome consists of two positive-strand RNA molecules (RNAs 1 and 2) which are separately encapsidated. By inoculating plant protoplasts, Rob and his colleagues discovered that the B-capsid RNAs (RNA 1) are replicated and expressed independently, whereas the M-capsid RNAs (RNA 2) are not, suggesting that RNA 1 codes for early functions and RNA 2 for late functions during viral infection [Goldbach, R. W., et al. (1985). Nature 286, 297–300]. The sequence of the complete CPMV genome suggested a relationship between CPMV and animal viruses and led to an important proposal that some plant and animal viruses had a common evolutionary origin, most likely in an insect virus [Goldbach, R. W. (1986). Annu Rev Phytopath 24, 289–310]. When Rob was appointed Professor of Virology in 1986, to succeed Professor Jan van der Want, he continued to be involved in CPMV research. He kept his ties with the research group of Joan Wellink in van Kammen's group until 2001 and published many co-authored articles on the functional analysis of the bipartite CPMV genome. They first observed that CPMV-infected protoplasts contain tubular structures extending from plasmodesmata and showed that these structures play an important role in cell-to-cell movement of the virus. The CPMV RNA 2-encoded 48 kDa protein was sufficient to induce these tubular structures in not only cowpea protoplasts but also protoplasts of many non-host plant species, such as barley, Arabidopsis, carrot and even insect cells, suggesting that this protein is not involved in host specificity.
In 1986, Rob started a new research line on tomato spotted wilt virus (TSWV). This virus was initially discovered in Australia almost a century ago, but only became important the early 1980s due to the worldwide spread of its insect vector Frankliniella occidentalis (thrips). Rob's group published the nucleotide sequence of the tripartite RNA genome and due to similarities in its particle morphology and genome, TSWV became classified as the first plant-infecting member of the family Bunyaviridae, a virus family that primarily consisted of animal-infecting viruses. Among the bunyaviruses, TSWV is unique in having two ambisense RNA segments. Rob's research team discovered that TSWV initiates genome transcription by a process called cap-snatching, a mechanism that was initially discovered and described for influenza virus. Together with Dr Dick Peters, his team discovered that the virus also replicates in the thrips vector and that TSWV could only be transmitted by the adult vector when it has acquired the virus in its L1 or L2 larval stage. Now over 20 viral species belonging to the genus Tospovirus, infecting nearly 1000 different plant species from more than 80 different families, dicots as well as monicots, have been described. Since tospoviruses are the only plant-infecting members in the family Bunyaviridae, they became an excellent group of viruses to use for the study of the differences and commonalities in the infection strategies of plant and animal viruses. Goldbach and co-workers were among the first to report that pathogen-derived-resistance was RNA-mediated, a phenomenon that later became widely known as post-transcriptional gene silencing or RNAi. One of Rob's latest achievements involved the trans-complementation of a plant viral RNAi suppressor protein to rescue a Tat-negative HIV-1 mutant to wild-type levels, supporting the hypothesis that RNAi also functions as an antiviral defence mechanism in animals [Schnettler, E., et al. (2009). EMBO Rep 10, 258–263]. In this issue of J Gen Virol is Rob's latest work on the mechanism of RNAi suppressor activity by rice hoja blanca virus [Hemmes, H., et al. (2009). J Gen Virol 90, 1762–1766].
Although Rob was responsible for the entire research program carried out at the Laboratory of Virology, the focus of his own research team (currently Assistant Professors Dr Jan van Lent and Dr Richard Kormelink, and also previously Dr Marcel Prins) was on plant viruses and the applications of plant viruses in biotechnology, including RNA-mediated plant protection and mechanisms of virus-induced gene-silencing.
Within his plant virus research team, over 60 PhD students completed their theses on various aspects of TSWV pathogenicity and, in collaboration with former colleagues of the laboratory of Molecular Biology of Wageningen University, on CPMV cell-to-cell movement. Numerous postdoctoral fellows have been mentored as well. The University of Wageningen credits Rob with co-authorship of over 400 papers, including many reviews.
Rob served on the Editorial Boards of Arch Virol, Virus Res and Virus Genes, as well as J Gen Virol from 1989 to 1993 and 2004 to 2008, where he was also an Editor from 2004 to 2008. He also served as an Editor for Mol Breed from 2001 to 2006. He was a member of several committees for the International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses, vice-president of the European Society of Virology, Director of Wageningen Electron Microscopy Centre, Board Member of the Royal Academy of Science Beijerinck Virology Foundation and Chairman of the Dutch Society of Plant Virology. He participated in the organization of many international conferences and gave invited seminars around the world. In 1993, Rob gave the inaugural Richard I. B. Francki memorial lecture at the Glasgow International Congress for Virology, a lectureship established in honour of another great plant virologist, who also met an untimely death at the young age of 60.
Rob was married to Evelien and had two sons, Onno and Sander. He had two passions in life: virology and bird-watching. He was a great success at both, and there is some comfort in the fact that he died doing something he loved. He will be sorely missed by his friends and colleagues. As one colleague put it, ‘what will plant virology be without Rob?’
Marilyn J. Roossinck, The Samuel Roberts Noble Foundation, Ardmore, OK, USA, and Richard Kormelink, Wageningen University, Wageningen, The Netherlands.
