A plant virus manipulates both its host plant and the insect that facilitates its transmission

A tomato plant is in the middle. From the left, a fly approaches, labelled "nonviruliferous." On the plant, another fly is colored red and is now viruliferous (what we're calling infected). This fly departs (indicated by arrows) to infect another plant, pictured on the right. The attractant and the olfactory receptor are indicated by text labels.
Figure 6 from Liang et al.

Viruses and other parasites are famously adept at trickery and manipulation. Think of your favorite creepy example of that, then consider a new paper about a virus so devious that it might become your new favorite (if you’re into that sort of thing). The article in Science Advances reveals the strategic brilliance of the tomato yellow leaf curl virus (TYLCV), which infects tomato plants with the help of its vector, a whitefly. Step 1 of the evil plan: the virus induces the plant to make a protein that attracts the whitefly. Nice move, but now there’s a new problem, which is that flies are attracted to already-infected plants. Our scheming virus wants the flies to carry it to uninfected plants. So, step 2: the virus inhibits the fly’s olfactory receptor that makes it home in on that attractive signal. At first this might seem like the virus is undoing its work, but think about it: now only uninfected flies will be attracted to the infected plants. That means more infected flies, which now no longer prefer the infected plants! [virus voice] MWAAAHAHAHAHA.

Here the authors nicely summarize the evil plan, using vivid language that highlights the strategic brilliance of this devastating pathogen:

These results reveal a unique two-tiered pull-push strategy in which TYLCV maximizes transmission by modulating terpene release from host plants as well as the olfactory system of its vector.

A plant virus manipulates both its host plant and the insect that facilitates its transmission
In Science Advances, 28 February 2025
From the groups of Ted Turlings, Wen Xie, and Youjun Zhang.

Snippet by Stephen Matheson

Image credit: Figure 6 from Liang et al. linked above (CC-BY-NC-ND).

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