Nonhost resistance refers to the microbial resistance mounted at the species level, namely none of the cultivars of the (plant) species is susceptible to a given pathogen. This form of disease resistance is considered to be the most robust and durable form of plant resistance. However, little is known about how nonhost plants engage viral pathogens. The goal of my research is to elucidate the mechanisms of anti-viral nonhost resistance using an important soybean viral pathogen-Bean pod mottle virus and its nonhost plant Nicotiana benthamiana (Nb) as experimental models. I am particularly interested in how nonhost resistance targets viral replication and viral movement. 

1.     Mingxia Cao,Xiaohong Ye, Kristen Willie, Junyan Lin, Xiuchun Zhang, Margaret G. Redinbaugh, Anne E. Simon, T. Jack Morris, and Feng Qu. 2010. The capsid protein of Turnip crinkle virus overcomes two separate defense barriers to facilitate viral systemic movement in Arabidopsis. Journal of Virology. 84, 7793-7802. 

2.     Junyan Lin, Ahmed K. Ali, Chen Ping, Margret G. Redinbaugh, Anne Dorrance,John Finer, Said Ghabrial and Feng Qu. 2013. A 5’stem-loop RNA structure of Bean pod mottle virus is required for RNA2 replication. Journal of GeneralVirology 94:1415-1420. 

3.     Junyan Lin,Margret G. Redinbaugh, Anne Dorrance, John Finer, Said Ghabrial and Feng Qu.2013. A cis-acting 58K protein is required for the replication of Bean pod mottle virus RNA2. Journal of Virology. (Accepted)

4.     Ahmed Khamis Ali, Junyan Lin, Junping Han, Feng Qu. 2013. The 5'untranslated region of Bean pod mottle virus RNA2 tolerates unusually large deletions or insertions. Virus Research, doi:10.1016/j.virusres.2013.10.024.