Disruption of nonsense-mediated decay by the multifunctional long-distance movement protein of Pea enation mosaic virus 2

Nonsense-mediated decay (NMD) is an RNA regulatory pathway that degrades both natural and faulty messenger RNAs with long 3’ untranslated regions. NMD targets diverse families of RNA viruses, forcing viruses to counteract the NMD pathway for successful amplification in host cells. Using a transcriptome-wide approach in the model plant Nicotiana benthamiana, We report that the Pea enation mosaic virus 2 long-distance movement protein, p26, protects a subset of natural cellular NMD-target transcripts, particularly those containing long, structured, GC-rich 3’ UTRs. Furthermore, RNA-seq revealed that the NMD pathway is highly dysfunctional during PEMV2 infection, with nearly half of NMD-targets increasing in abundance. Widespread changes in host transcriptomes are common during RNA virus infections and these results suggest that virus-mediated NMD-inhibition may be a major contributing factor. Identified differentially expressed transcripts in Nicotiana benthamiana in the presence of an NMD inhibitor, p26 over-expression, and PEMV2 infection