Showing papers on "Mycovirus published in 1980"

Effects of Fungal Viruses on Their Hosts

Abstract: Although the presence of viruses in fungi has long been suspected (102, 113), experimental evidence was not forthcoming until 1962, when virus particles were demonstrated in diseased mushroom (48, 53). The subse­ quent discovery that virus particles in Penicillium spp. (44, 68) contain double-stranded RNA (dsRNA) greatly stimulated the search for virus in other filamentous fungi. To date viruses or virus-like particles (VLPs) have been reported in over 100 species of fungi belonging to all major taxa (8, 55, 74, 76). The discovery of fungal viruses (mycoviruses) in the 1960s unleashed great expectations, as virus infection was suggested to account for some of the abnormalities and unusual biological activities associated with certain fungi. Many of the reported examples of cytoplasmic inheri­ tance in fungi have not as yet been assigned to any particular genome (105), and the possibility that virus infection rather than a mutation in a cytoplas­ mic gene may cause some of these conditions appeared attractive (57,81). The fact that virus-infected, but not virus-free, strains of the bacterium Corynebacterium diphtheriae produce diphtheria toxin (46) provided the rationale for investigating the role of virus infection in toxin production by certain plant pathogenic fungi (13, 43). Furthermore, virus infection was sought to explain the variation in antibiotic production and the instability of some strains of industrial fungi (75, 77). The possibility that viruses with potentially adverse effects on phytopathogenic fungi might be exploited as a means of biological control was pursued with enthusiasm in several labo­ ratories around the world (69, 95).