Viroporins are small, hydrophobic viral proteins that modify cellular membranes to form tiny pores for influx of ions and small molecules. Previously, viroporins were identified exclusively in vertebrate viruses. Recent studies have shown that both plant-infecting positive-sense single-stranded (+ss) and negative-sense single-stranded (-ss) RNA viruses also encode functional viroporins. These seminal discoveries not only advance our understanding of the distribution and evolution of viroporins, but also open up a new field of plant virus research. Copyright: © 2024 Wu et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Guanwei Wu, Jianping Chen, Aiming Wang, Fei Yan. Unveiling the viroporin arsenal in plant viruses: Implications for the future. PLoS pathogens. 2024 Sep;20(9):e1012473
PMID: 39235994
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