Experimental evolution of Tobacco etch virus carrying gene duplications

We investigated the evolutionary fate of gene duplications in Tobacco etch virus (TEV). We experimentally explored four cases of homologous duplication of genes within the TEV genome: (i) the multi-functional protein (HC-Pro) involved in aphid transmission, polyprotein cleavage, genome amplification, and suppression of RNA silencing, (ii) the main viral protease (NIa-Pro), (iii) the viral RNA-dependent RNA polymerase (NIb), and (iv) the coat protein (CP).