GSE137303
Effect on tomato plants of asymptomatic infection with southern tomato virus
Southern tomato virus (STV) often infects healthy tomato plants (Solanum lycopersicum). In this study, we compared STV-free and STV-infected cultivar M82 plants to determine the effect of STV infection on the host plant. STV-free plants exhibited a short and bushy phenotype, whereas STV-infected plants exhibited increased height. STV-infected plants produced more fruit than STV-free plants, and the germination rate of seeds from STV-infected plants was higher than that of seeds from STV-free plants. This phenotypic difference was also observed in progeny plants (siblings) derived from a single STV-infected plant in which the transmission rate of STV to progeny plants via the seeds was approximately 86%. These results suggest that the interaction between STV and host plants is mutualistic. Transcriptome analyses revealed that STV infection affected gene expressions in host plants, notably evidenced by down-regulation of genes involved in ethylene biosynthesis and signaling. STV-infected tomato plants thus might be artificially selected due to their superior traits as a crop. Overall design: RNA-seq analyses using three 1-month-old STV-infected and three 1-month-old STV-free tomato plants of cv. M82