Barley yellow dwarf (BYD)-associated viruses are economically important in a wide range of cereals and grasses worldwide. These viruses belong to family Luteoviridae and are efficiently transmitted by aphids in a circulative and non-propagative manner. BYD-associated viruses have a genome of single-stranded positive sense RNA (+ssRNA). Even if isolates of BYD-associated viruses from different p...

Satellite RNAs usurp the replication machinery of their helper viruses, even though they bear little or no sequence similarity to the helper virus RNA. In Cereal yellow dwarf polerovirus serotype RPV (CYDV-RPV), the 322-nucleotide satellite RNA (satRPV RNA) accumulates to high levels in the presence of the CYDV-RPV helper virus. Rolling circle replication generates multimeric satRPV RNAs that s...

Between 2005 and 2008 the prices of rice, wheat and maize were more than doubled (von Braun, 2008). The sudden surge in cereal prices led or was led by major uncertainties to secure staple food supplies in many developing countries, especially in Asia. Several economic and social factors collectively appear to have triggered the unstable supplies of cereal crops during the recent food crisis (H...

Barley yellow dwarf (BYD), the most common and widespread virus disease of cereal crops worldwide (14), may be caused by any one of several Barley yellow dwarf viruses (BYDVs) of the family Luteoviridae. Transmitted by at least 25 aphid species (24), these viruses historically have been classified into two subgroups and five strains based on aphid vector specificity and efficiency (31). However...

Circulative transmission of viruses in the Luteoviridae, such as cereal yellow dwarf virus (CYDV), requires a series of precisely orchestrated interactions between virus, plant, and aphid proteins. Natural selection has favored these viruses to be retained in the phloem to facilitate acquisition and transmission by aphids. We show that treatment of infected oat tissue homogenate with sodium sul...

The SCF (SKP1-CUL1-F-box protein) ubiquitin ligase complex mediates polyubiquitination of proteins targeted for degradation, thereby controlling a plethora of biological processes in eukaryotic cells. Although this ubiquitination machinery is found and functional only in eukaryotes, many non-eukaryotic pathogens also encode F-box proteins, the critical subunits of the SCF complex. Increasing ev...