Natural Resistance Mechanisms of Plants to Viruses

Over the course of evolution most plants have acquired the ability to defend themselves against most groups of pathogens, including the viruses. Many antiviral resistance phenomena have been known and studied for decades but, until recently, understanding of their underlying mechanisms has lagged behind. These phenomena include resistance to infection, resistance to virus translocation through the plant, recovery from infection and genetically defined resistance, together with the associated phenomena of the local lesion response, and induced, or acquired, resistance. The identification and cloning of plant resistance genes, characterization of downstream signaling components, and especially the explosion of data regarding gene-silencing mechanisms, has led to rapid progress in the investigation of natural resistance phenomena. Meanwhile, in plant virology there has been remarkable progress in the arenas of replication, movement proteins and plasmodesmatal gating, and in the discovery of gene silencing suppressors. Therefore, it seemed timely and appropriate to link older but still important data on the well known, ‘classical’ resistance phenomena with the new information that has emerged during the last decade or so. We hope that this book will inspire further research in this area, as resistance presents the most economical and environmentally sound approach to control plant virus diseases. Future technologies that emerge from this research might include an improved ability to introduce resistance genes into virus-susceptible, agronomically important cultivars, to improve current pathogen-derived resistance strategies using our new knowledge of small interfering and microRNAs, or to develop targeted chemical treatments.

Gad Loebenstein. Ph.D. Graduated from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and joined the Agricultural Research Organization, Volcani Center, Israel. He served as Head of the Department pf Plant Virology, Director pf the Agricultural Research Organization and Chief Scientist of the Ministry of Agriculture. His major research interests are plant virus diseases and natural resistance mechanisms of plants to viruses. His published work includes more than 200 scientific and technical papers. He was appointed as Adjunct Professor at the Hebrew University and at the Tel Aviv University, and at the latter as Professor Emeritus. He is a Fellow of the American Phytopathological Society, a Corresponding Member at the German Phytomedizinische Society and a member of the Kazakh Academy for Agriculture. In 1982 he received the Rothschild Prize for Agriculture.

Dr. John P. Carr
PhD in UK with Michael Wilson (1980-83), Postdoc with Dan Klessig
(University of Utah and Rutgers University: 1984-1989), Research Associate
with Milton Zaitlin (Cornell University: 1989-1993), own research group at
Cambridge University since 1993 (Senior Lecturer in Molecular Plant
Pathology).