Abstract - I will talk about our recent progress in understanding of the genetic and molecular mechanisms underlying a tomato lethal disease caused by the infection of Cucumber mosaic virus (CMV) associated with D satellite RNA (CMV/D satRNA).  Previous work has shown that CMV/D satRNA induces programmed cell death in developing vascular cells which leads to rapid systemic necrosis and plant death. The necrogenicity is determined by three nucleotides near the 3’ end of DsatRNA. The lethal disease only occurs in tomato and its close wild relatives.  I will further report the results from the analysis of small RNA (sRNA) profiling and degradome in the infected plants and discuss the role of RDR6 and SGS3 in D satRNA-induced rapid plant death.

Biography - coming soon