Wheat Yellow Mosaic Virus NIb Interacting with Host Light Induced Protein (LIP) Facilitates Its Infection through Perturbing the Abscisic Acid Pathway in Wheat.

Positive-sense RNA viruses have a small genome with very limited coding capacity and are highly reliant on host factors to fulfill their infection. However, few host factors have been identified to participate in wheat yellow mosaic virus (WYMV) infection. Here, we demonstrate that wheat ( ) light-induced protein (LIP) interacts with the WYMV nuclear inclusion b protein (NIb). A bimolecular fluorescence complementation (BIFC) assay displayed that the subcellular distribution patterns of LIP were altered by NIb in Nicotiana benthamiana. Transcription of was significantly decreased by WYMV infection and -silencing wheat plants displayed more susceptibility to WYMV in comparison with the control plants, suggesting that knockdown of impaired host resistance. Moreover, the transcription level of was induced by exogenous abscisic acid (ABA) stimuli in wheat, while knockdown of significantly repressed the expression of ABA-related genes such as wheat abscisic acid insensitive 5 (TaABI5), abscisic acid insensitive 8 (TaABI8), pyrabatin resistance 1-Llike (TaPYL1), and pyrabatin resistance 3-Llike (TaPYL3). Collectively, our results suggest that the interaction of NIb with LIP facilitated the virus infection possibly by disturbing the ABA signaling pathway in wheat.