| Viroids represent autonomously replicating subviral pathogens, probably living fossils originating from RNA world that adapted to plant biochemical machinery and are highly pathogenic to certain hosts. Our group is involved in studies of biochemical aspects of viroid-caused pathogenesis, propagation, antisensing, and variability. Mainly PSTVd and hop viroids are studied. At present our research concentrate to induction of viroid variability under stress conditions, adaptability and evolution of molecular variants. Highly efficient cDNA and RNA inoculation methods using Gene Gun were worked out in our lab to study fitness of viroid "thermomutants". |
