Hyderabad, May 13 -- Scientists at CSIR-Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology (CCMB) have uncovered a crucial plant defence mechanism in which plants use liquid-like sticky protein droplets to trap and disable invading viruses.
The study, led by Dr Mandar V Deshmukh and published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society, explains the molecular mechanism by which plants arrest viral infections.
Researchers said many viruses contain double-stranded RNA as their genetic material. When plants are infected, they produce specialised RNA-binding proteins that recognise viral RNA and bind to viral replication complexes, thereby preventing the virus from replicating inside infected cells.
While scientists previously believed these RNA-...