Plant Virus Database: a resource for exploring the diversity of plant viruses and their interactions with hosts

Abstract

Plant viruses cause huge damage to commercial crops, yet the studies towards plant viruses are limited and the diversity of plant viruses are under-estimated yet. This study built an up-to-date atlas of plant viruses by computationally identifying viruses from the RNA-seq data in the One Thousand Plant Transcriptomes Initiative (1KP) and by integrating plant viruses from public databases, and further built the Plant Virus Database (PVD, freely available at http://47.90.94.155/PlantVirusBase/#/home) to store and organize these viruses. The PVD contained 3,206 virus species and 9,604 virus-plant host interactions which were more than twice that reported in previous plant virus databases. The plant viruses were observed to infect only a few plant hosts and vice versa. Analysis and comparison of the viromes in the Monocots and Eudicots, and those in the plants in tropical and temperate regions showed significant differences in the virome composition. Finally, several factors including the viral group (DNA and RNA viruses), enveloped or not, and the transmission mode of viruses, were found to have no or weak associations with the host range of plant viruses. Overall, the study not only provides a valuable resource for further studies of plant viruses, but also deepens our understanding towards the genetic diversity of plant viruses and the virus-host interactions.