That was interesting. Good work by the undergraduates in getting a publication.

So Henry, tell us how one would go about editing the GAPC gene in order to keep these mutations from being produced, and how you accomplish that in all the roses that are currently being produced all over the country?

I would guess that a "next step" would be to examine the same gene sequence in one of the determined "resistant" roses. The question would probably be what blocking structure is preventing the mutation (such as is there a methyl group instead of a proton at a certain position, etc.).

Regarding your second question as how could this study help the roses already out in commerce?

I doubt that roses are important enough to invest the effort/expense to do this with genetic engineering.

Possibly the observation is due to the rose trying to defend itself against the rose rosette virus.

"whereas activating autophagy by silencing GAPC genes enhanced plant resistance to viral infection"

https://elifesciences.org/articles/23897

Their long time prediction (hope) is:

"Together these findings provide direct evidence that autophagy helps to defend plants against a number of viruses, by degrading one or more viral proteins in the plants. In the future, researchers may be able to build on these findings to engineer crop plants to be more resistant to viruses."

Autophagy was the basis for a 2016 Nobel Prize.

https://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/medicine/laureates/2016/press.html

I didn't know what I had and lost about half my roses to this about 8-years ago. Oh Henry!

I am not opening your links because my psyche has not recovered. But, my garden has recovered, just with different varieties.

This is an example of what is being done at the gene level for a mite spread virus that effects a food crop:

http://www.isaaa.org/kc/cropbiotechupdate/article/default.asp?ID=15516

AND

http://www.ksre.k-state.edu/news/stories/2017/06/06-08-2017-wheat-gene.html

"Through traditional breeding processes, it can take several years before resistance genes show up in varieties available for planting."

Henry, thanks for sharing this. I read the paper and I didn't see where they show that the uninfected plants are in fact resistant as opposed to just not infected? I'm not sure how they would prove this as you can't prove a negative. I have a question for you about autophagy. Wouldn't a plant always use autophagy to try to defend/fix itself when infected with a virus?

I agree, roses are probably not important enough to warrant the genetic engineering as compared to actual food crops.

from your first link: "Consistent with this anti-viral role of host autophagy, some viruses encode virulence factors that interact with the host autophagy machinery and block the execution of autophagy. In contrast, other viruses appear to utilise components of the autophagic machinery to foster their own intracellular growth or non-lytic cellular egress."

Wow! I hadn't thought about it but of course viruses do this. Very helpful Henry, thanks for the links!

from your first link: "Consistent with this anti-viral role of host autophagy, some viruses encode virulence factors that interact with the host autophagy machinery and block the execution of autophagy. In contrast, other viruses appear to utilise components of the autophagic machinery to foster their own intracellular growth or non-lytic cellular egress."

Wow! I hadn't thought about it but of course viruses do this. Very helpful Henry, thanks for the links!

I'm thinking other pathogens, for instance fungal pathogens must do the same. What would be interesting is looking at how something like RMV interacts with autophagy, or even black spot, compared to RRV.