Behind their apparent simplicity, plant viruses have an incredible capacity to modify their hosts’ biological processes, including control of gene expression, macromolecular trafficking and transport, basal and induced stress defence mechanisms, and many other areas of the plant physiology. On their own, plant viruses are fascinating entities, having evolved an incredible array of smart strategies to express their genes from their very compact genomes. Thus, plant viruses are excellent study subjects, providing keys and probes to analyse and dissect many aspects of the plant biology. On a more strategic side, using very few building blocks, plant viruses produce transmission and persistence particles with amazing properties and incredible biotechnological potential. Last but not least, plant viruses cause global and regional economic and societal losses, being responsible for a significant proportion of devastating emergent and re-emergent plant diseases; development of strategies to control phytopathogenic viruses are therefore of the outmost importance. This conference is open to all researchers studying plant viruses and virus-induced diseases at any level, from molecular to ecological scale, including evolutionary aspects of plant viruses and virus-induced diseases.
Topics: Plant, virus, phytopathogenic