The virus has more secrets to reveal

The tobacco mosaic virus gets company

Mundry and his work groups didn't only focus on the the tobacco mosaic virus. Here is a small selection of other key fields they studied:

• A fundamental phenomenon of virus replication discovered in the tobacco mosaic virus encouraged them to take an even more abstract approach. They managed to show that the self-assembly of the individual virus components at the end of a replication cycle can be triggered without the special structure of the RNA section. A very simple nucleic acid molecule (polyadenylic acid) with a specified minimum length was sufficient.

Groups associated with Mundry also studied plants' own defence mechanisms in addition to virus-dependent ones:

• One of these were so-called RIPs (ribosome inhibiting proteins). Many plants form these if tissue is damaged, eventually leading to the "suicide" of the affected cell. Stuttgart researchers were also the first to isolate RIPs that had an inhibiting effect in bacteria. The RIPs that had been tested until then had only acted in higher organisms. RIPs are not only of interest for combating viral and fungal diseases in plants, but also in their function as "molecular tools" in tumour therapy.
  
  
• Secondly, they succeeded in cloning the gene of a plant enzyme that releases hydrogen cyanide as protection against pests or fungi. This enzyme is now produced on an industrial scale.