Green shoots of geminivirology

摘要

Advances in knowledge about geminiviruses (members of the family Geminiviridae), which cause several plant diseases of great economic importance, have been increasingly rapid since the somewhat belated discovery of their characteristic geminate (twinned) particles in 1974 [2] and of their circular single-stranded genomic DNA in 1977 [12, 14]. Indeed, they have become one of the best studied families of plant viruses and been shown to possess several unique features. This special issue contains a set of short reviews that describe some of these features and discuss some of the fastest-developing aspects of geminivirology.