receptors

[Ed Rybicki]

> Ulrich,
> "They" referred to luteoviruses, but your point is taken. On the other hand,
> one could argue that replicative viruses are insect viruses that can also
> replicate in plants, rather than plant viruses that have hijacked an insect
> for transport.....

Again, it is instructive to see just which viruses multiply in insects and
in plants: reoviruses, rhabdoviruses, bunyaviruses....all very "animal"
viruses, which can be argued have evolved to use plants as alternative
hosts (=vectors).  Other more distant support for such a
hypothesis comes from tenuiviruses, which apparently resemble nothing more
than an "escaped" helical nucleocapsid from a kosher enveloped negative-
sense ssRNA animal virus - and which are insect-transmitted - and the plant
picorna-like viruses (eg parsnip yellow fleck), which, although they
apparently do not (any more?) replicate in their aphid vectors, are
definitely vectored.  And look a whole lot like a myriad other picorna-
like viruses of insects....and picornaviruses of animals......  Makes tyou
think, doesn't it?







  ____________________________________________________________________
 | Ed Rybicki, PhD             |       "Lord, won't you buy me        |
 | (ed at micro.uct.ac.za)        |                                      |
 | Dept Microbiology           |         A Mer-ce-des Benz..."        |
 | University of Cape Town     |                                      |
 | Private Bag, Rondebosch     |                                      |
 | 7700, South Africa          |           - Janis Joplin             |
 | fax: 27-21-650 4023         |                                      |
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