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Abstract Developing convenient defense approaches against invading plant pathogens is a gaining more interest in recent years to palliate their impact on many important crops. To develop such approaches, investigation and understanding of the underlying mechanisms of plant-virus interaction is indispensable to achieve such a goal. Potato virus X, PVX, like most plant viruses has been thought to be excluded from plant growing points containing the shoot apical meristem. In the current work, a new experimental system consisting of PVX and recombinant PVX-Cre (P1 recombinase) has been developed, to study the effect of Cre recombinase on virus entry into growing points. PVX-Cre infected plants were more severely diseased, heavily stunted as compared to PVX infected N. benthamiana plants and then showed a “recovery” phenotype. Florescence microscopic investigations could show PVX in meristematic tissue of host plant in presence of Cre. Although, it has not any RNA silencing suppression activity, RT-qPCR investigation showed that Cre protein might has an effect on the endogenous polymerase RDR1 activity. The here reported results give more insights for understanding the mechanism of plant infection process. |