plant viruses and movement [WAS Ebola...]

[Ulrich Melcher]

 Ed Rybicki wrote
>
>Eugene Koonin has shown that the "35K proteins" of viruses like
>the Bromoviridae (Koonin EV, Mushegian AR, Ryabov EV, Dolja VV (1991)
>Diverse Groups of Plant RNA and DNA
>Viruses Share Related Movement Proteins That May Possess Chaperone-Like
>Activity.  J Gen
>Virol 72:2895-2903) look as though they have come from plant
>chaperonins like the HSP90 protein.
>
1.  The similarity that Koonin et al saw was not to 3a proteins of the
bromoviridae.  Rather, it was to movement proteins of caulimoviruses,
nepoviruses, barley yellows virus, tobamoviruses, tobraviruses,
geminiviruses, comoviruses and apple chlorotic leaf spot virus.
2.  Which region of hsp90's seemed similar to the movement proteins
depended on which viral taxon was being looked at.
3.  No hsp90 similarity to the bromoviridae 3a-like proteins was found.  I
believe that these and the hsp90 movement proteins are related in sequence,
I would expect the hsp90 similarity, if meaningful to be present
throughout.  Since it is not, I remain skeptical that the similarity means
anything.

Ulrich Melcher                 umelcher at bmb-fs1.biochem.okstate.edu
Department of Biochemistry     Tel: 405-744-6210
  and Molecular Biology        FAX: 405-744-7799
Oklahoma State University
Stillwater OK 74078-0454 USA