Description
Our work evaluates the effects of changes in environmental parameters on plant viral diseases, on their defensive responses to those infections, and on how viruses adapt to the changes in their environment. The alterations we study may be associated with the current process of accelerated climate change of anthropogenic origin (for example, variations in parameters such as temperature or environmental CO2 levels, which affect both viral and host plant functions), or to non-terrestrial parameters, such as the absence of a gravity vector, or the effect of cosmic radiation.
We study how each of these alterations in the medium affects the interaction of RNA+ viruses with model plants under controlled experimental conditions, and the ability of these viruses to adapt to them. In particular, we focus our studies on the roles that viral proteins known as pathogenicity determinants may play in both, the virulence of infection and the abilities of viruses to adapt in altered environments.
Members