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Phytoviruses are highly prevalent in plants worldwide and one of the main threats to crops. The situation may become even more serious in the near future, as the current context of global warming may considerably favor virus emergence. For sustainable and healthy agricultural production, strategies for virus disease management must be developed that, to be effective, will require in-depth knowledge of the close interactions that viruses, obligate intracellular parasites, establish with their hosts. In recent years, considerable progress has been achieved in this area, but there is still a long way to go and there are many challenges to face. Some, though not all, of the questions that deserve further attention include: (i) Molecular analysis of components, in either the virus or the plant, which affect or modulate plant–virus interactions; (ii) molecular bases of viral pathogenesis; (iii) effects of environmental conditions on the outcome of plant–virus interactions; or (iv) interference of viral infection with host signal transduction pathways. In addition, the potential of viruses to be used as tools for rewiring metabolic pathways or for inducing stress resistance in plants is only starting to be looked at. With the advent of “omic” technologies and, more recently, the development of highly efficient next generation sequencing approaches, together with the continuous improvement of data analysis pipelines, new avenues are opened to shed additional light on the intricate interplay between viruses and plants. Moreover, innovations in biological microscopy and in genome editing strategies are allowing virus researchers, on one side, to explore connections between the virus and the host at subcellular levels, and, on the other side, to expand the capability to genetically probe virus–host interactions and to identify novel antiviral targets. For this Special Issue, I strongly encourage colleagues to contribute with their most recent results to better understand the sophisticated relationships that plant viruses establish with their hosts.
Keywords:
antiviral responses
host factors
viral pathogenesis
host-driven viral evolution
RNA silencing suppression
virus resistance
plant virus
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