Comparative Plant Transcriptome Profiling of Arabidopsis thaliana Col-0 and Camelina sativa var.

Evidence is accumulating that plant viruses alter host plant traits in ways that modify their insect vectors' behavior. These alterations often enhance virus transmission, which has led to the hypothesis that these effects are manipulations caused by viral adaptation. However, we lack a mechanistic understanding of the genetic basis of these indirect, plant-mediated effects on vectors, their dependence on the plant host, and their relation to the mode of virus transmission. Transcriptome profiling of Arabidopsis thaliana and Camelina sativa plants infected with turnip yellows virus (TuYV) or cauliflower mosaic virus (CaMV) and infested with the common aphid vector Myzus persicae revealed strong virus- and host-specific differences in gene expression patterns. CaMV infection caused more severe effects on the phenotype of both plant hosts than did TuYV infection, and the severity of symptoms correlated strongly with the proportion of differentially expressed genes, especially photosynthesis genes. Accordingly, CaMV infection modified aphid behavior and fecundity more strongly than did infection with TuYV. Overall, infection with CaMV, relying on the noncirculative transmission mode, tends to have effects on metabolic pathways, with strong potential implications for insect vector-plant host interactions (e.g., photosynthesis, jasmonic acid, ethylene, and glucosinolate biosynthetic processes), while TuYV, using the circulative transmission mode, alters these pathways only weakly. These virus-induced deregulations of genes that are related to plant physiology and defense responses might impact both aphid probing and feeding behavior on infected host plants, with potentially distinct effects on virus transmission.