Unravelling the involvement of cilevirus p32 protein in the viral transport

“…The C-terminus of the MPs assigned to the 30K superfamily has been described to be a multifunctional region intrinsically implicated with several aspects of viral movement, such as interaction with the cognate capsid protein (CP), formation of tubular structures, and efficiency in viral cell-to-cell and systemic transport [10,13,46,52,53]. In our recent study, the sequential C-terminal deletion of CiLV-C2 MP showed that, although the absence of this fragment (deletion of 70 residues) still enables cell-to-cell movement, its removal impairs the correct tubule polymerization and MP-plasmodesma association, affecting the viral cellto-cell and long-distance transport; furthermore, this region is independently responsible to recruit the p29 (cilevirus capsid protein) to the cell periphery [34]. Consequently, any MP modification in this region could affect one or several viral movement processes.…”