Fig. 5: Recruitment of HRR factors onto unstable genomic DNA and defense related genes prevents the loading of HRR factors on viral genome.

a, b ChIP-qPCR assays show that RAD51 enrichment was significantly increased over rDNA and selected PCGs but decreased over viral DNA in atxr5 atxr6 vs Col-0 in a natural condition (a) or in a condition where increased number of symptomatic atxr5 atxr6 plants were purposedly collected (b). AT2G45820 serves as a negative control. c Overview of RAD51 signal change in atxr5 atxr6 and Col-0 upon virus inoculation. d Distributions of RAD51 and RPA1A ChIP signal (normalized with the reads of mitochondrial DNA) in different locus categories in mock-treated and virus-inoculated plants. e Violin plot shows transcription changes from the loci with unchanged and increased RAD51 ChIP signal in virus-inoculated vs mock-treated atxr5 atxr6. Horizontal lines in the bar plots display the 75th, 50th and 25th percentiles, respectively. Whiskers represents the minimum and maximum values. P value is calculated by unpaired two-tailed Welch’s approximate t-test. f Representative pictures of the virus-inoculated plants in indicated lines. Photographs were taken at 14 dpi. Scale bars, 1 cm. g Percentages of symptomatic plants of virus-inoculated plants in indicated backgrounds at 11 and 13 dpi. h Constitutive expression of RAD51 promotes the viral DNA amplification in Col-0 and atxr5 atxr6. qPCR assays show increase of virus titers in RAD51 overexpression lines vs their reference backgrounds. Samples were collected at 14 dpi. Normalization of viral DNA was conducted as Fig. 2g. In (a), (b), (g) and (h), each dot in the bar plot represents one replicate, the experiments were performed with 36 plants/replicate. Data are presented as mean ± SD (n = 3 biological replicates). Statistics in Figs. 5a, b, g, and h were performed with unpaired two-tailed student t-test, *, **, *** and ****, P < 0.05, 0.01, 0.001, and 0.0001, respectively. Source data are provided in the Source Data File.