Animal virus in plant cells

[Carrington]

This topic seems to come up over and over again, with most responses being 
ill-informed.  Here is the simple situation regarding 
plant/animal-infecting viruses:

There are several families of viruses that contain individual members that 
infect both plant and animal (insect) hosts.  These include the 
Rhabdoviridae (e.g. sonchus yellow net virus), Reoviridae (e.g. wound tumor 
virus), and Bunyaviridae (e.g. tomato spotted wilt virus).  These viruses 
replicate in both their plant hosts and their insect vectors.  They are not 
known to have vertebrate hosts.  There might be a few other viruses that 
can replicate in both plant and insect vector hosts, but these have yet to 
been characterized in this regard.

Jim Carrington

James C. Carrington
Department of Biology
Texas A&M University
College Station, TX  77843
Phone: 409-845-2325
Fax: 409-845-2891
e-mail: carrington at bio.tamu.edu