Figure 1.

Symptoms caused by PSTVd-Nb infections in tomato (a) and N. benthamiana (b). PSTVd-infected plants of each species showing typical symptoms of stunting and leaf curling at 30 dpi (left) are compared with the respective mock-inoculated plants (right). (c,d) accumulation of circular and linear genomic PSTVd RNAs (c) and PSTVd-derived small RNAs (PSTVd-sRNAs) (d) at 30 dpi in N. benthamiana and tomato plants. The total RNA preparations from mock-inoculated (M) and PSTVd-infected (P) tomato and N. benthamiana (Nb) plants were separated by denaturing PAGE in 5% (c) or 17% (d) gels and analyzed by Northern-blot hybridization with a DIG-labeled riboprobe for detecting PSTVd (+) strand. Equal loading was assessed by the intensity of the bands corresponding to rRNAs after staining with ethidium bromide (c,d, bottom).