Plant Virology
Virus transport :
In order to spread in the plant viruses take advantage of the plants own transport system. This involves plasmodesmata connecting individual cells and the phloem vessels which can transport the virus to distant sites in the plant.
However, virus particles (blue) cannot spread through the plasmodesmata unless these are modified by the virus.
For this purpose plant viruses express various movement proteins (red) which increases the size of the plasmodesmata.
Several different mechanisms seems to be involved in this process.
Symptoms
Virus structure
Transmission
Virus transport
Biotechnology
Tutorial (symptoms)
Tutorial (virus genes)
Links