The cap‐snatching frequency of a plant bunyavirus from nonsense mRNAs is low but is increased by silencing of UPF1 or SMG7

Bunyaviruses cleave host cellular mRNAs to acquire cap structures for their own mRNAs in a process called cap‐snatching. How bunyaviruses interact with cellular mRNA surveillance pathways such as nonsense‐mediated decay (NMD) during cap‐snatching remains poorly understood, especially in plants. Rice stripe virus (RSV) is a plant bunyavirus threatening rice production in East Asia. Here, with a newly developed system allowing us to present defined mRNAs to RSV in Nicotiana benthamiana, we found that the frequency of RSV to target nonsense mRNAs (nsRNAs) during cap‐snatching was much lower than its frequency to target normal mRNAs. The frequency of RSV to target nsRNAs was increased by virus‐induced gene silencing of UPF1 or SMG7, each encoding a protein component involved in early steps of NMD (in an rdr6 RNAi background). Coincidently, RSV accumulation was increased in the UPF1‐ or SMG7‐silenced plants. These data indicated that the frequency of RSV to target nsRNAs during cap‐snatching is restricted by NMD. By restricting the frequency of RSV to target nsRNAs, NMD may impose a constraint to the overall cap‐snatching efficiency of RSV. Besides a deeper understanding for the cap‐snatching of RSV, these findings point to a novel role of NMD in plant–bunyavirus interactions.