Pervasive splicing in a plant DNA virus

RNA splicing is considered an oddity in plant viruses; here, unexpectedly, we find it to be prevalent in the geminivirus tomato yellow leaf curl virus. Transcriptome analysis revealed eight splicing events generating novel protein isoforms, six of which were validated and two shown to depend on the plant spliceosome. Splicing impairment reduced viral accumulation and symptom severity, demonstrating that splicing contributes to infectivity, potentially by expanding the viral proteome, and suggesting that plant virus transcriptomes need to be reassessed.