Evolutionary aspects of grapevine virology

Abstract

Previous analyses have shown that plant viruses represent a host-specific subset of eukaryotic viruses enriched in positive-strand RNA species from diverse families and devoid of the bona fide double-stranded DNA species (Dolja VV, Koonin EV, Curr Opin Virol 1:322-331, 2011). In this article, we briefly discuss the grapevine virome and its relationships with the virome of flowering plants. We also provide a comparative phylogenomic analysis of the three families of viruses that are involved in the most widespread and economically important grapevine diseases in a search of commonalities and evolutionary forces that shaped the virome of this plant host.