Abstract
Plant intracellular nucleotide binding-leucine-rich repeat (NLR) receptors play critical roles in mediating host immunity to pathogen attack. Successful virus infection in plant involves several essential steps including viral replication, intercellular and long-distance movement. How plant NLRs induce resistances against virus infection remains largely unknown. We demonstrated here that tomato NLR Sw-5b locates to cytoplasm and nucleus, respectively, to play different roles in inducing host resistances against tospovirus infection. The cytoplasmic Sw-5b functions to induce a strong cell death response to inhibit TSWV replication. This host response is, however, insufficient to block viral intercellular and long-distance movement. The nucleus-localized Sw-5b triggers a host defense that weakly inhibit viral replication but strongly impede virus intercellular and systemic movement. Furthermore, the cytoplasmic and nuclear Sw-5b act synergistically to confer a strong immunity to TSWV infection. Our finding adds a new knowledge to our current understanding on the plant NLRs-triggered immunity against virus infection.
Competing Interest Statement
The authors have declared no competing interest.