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Viroids: The Smallest Known Infectious Agents Cause Accumulation of Viroid-Specific Small RNAs

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From Nucleic Acids Sequences to Molecular Medicine

Part of the book series: RNA Technologies ((RNATECHN))

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Abstract

Viroids are plant-infectious, noncoding, unencapsidated, circular RNAs ranging in size from 250 to 400 nucleotides that are transcribed in a rolling-circle mechanism either in nuclei (Pospiviroidae) or in chloroplasts (Avsunviroidae) of plant hosts. The pathogenic effect caused by viroids is still an enigma: Potato spindle tuber viroid (PSTVd), the type strain of Pospiviroidae, causes typical symptoms in tomato plants, but the severity of symptoms depends on the tomato cultivar; different strains of PSTVd, which vary in sequence by a few mutations from each other, induce symptoms from very mild up to necrosis upon infection of a cultivar. According to recent findings, viroids cause the accumulation of viroid-specific small RNAs (vsRNA) similar in size to small interfering (siRNA) and miRNAs, but they do escape the cytoplasmic silencing mechanism. In this chapter, we will discuss these findings and hypotheses on the biogenesis of viroid-specific small RNAs and connections to symptom induction.

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Acknowledgments

Our work on viroids is supported by joint grants from the German Research Foundation to GS (465/7) and from the Czech Science Foundation to MJ (GACR P501/10/J018).

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Correspondence to Detlev Riesner .

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© 2012 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

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Matoušek, J., Riesner, D., Steger, G. (2012). Viroids: The Smallest Known Infectious Agents Cause Accumulation of Viroid-Specific Small RNAs. In: Erdmann, V., Barciszewski, J. (eds) From Nucleic Acids Sequences to Molecular Medicine. RNA Technologies. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-27426-8_26

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