Rubén González

• PhD
• Postdoctoral researcher at Institut Pasteur

Predicting viral emergence is difficult due to the stochastic nature of the underlying processes and the many factors that govern pathogen evolution. Environmental factors affecting the host, the pathogen and the interaction between both are key in emergence. In particular, infectious disease dynamics are affected by spatiotemporal heterogeneity in...

Significance Viruses are seen as selfish pathogens that harm their hosts to ensure their own survival. However, metagenomic studies are drawing a new picture in which viruses are present everywhere and not always associated to diseases. A classic observation in plant pathology is that the outcome of infection depends on environmental conditions. He...

Viruses are obligate pathogens that entirely rely on their hosts to complete their infectious cycle. The outcome of viral infections depends on the status of the host. Host developmental stage is an important but sometimes overlooked factor impacting host–virus interactions. This impact is especially relevant in a context where climate change and h...

Microbes associated with an organism can significantly modulate its susceptibility to viral infections, but our understanding of the influence of individual microbes remains limited. The nematode Caenorhabditis elegans is a model organism that in nature inhabits environments rich in bacteria. Here, we examine the impact of 71 naturally associated b...

Plant viruses account for enormous agricultural losses worldwide, and the most effective way to combat them is to identify genetic material conferring plant resistance to these pathogens. Aiming to identify genetic associations with responses to infection, we screened a large panel of Arabidopsis thaliana natural inbred lines for four disease-relat...

Viral infections induce symptoms reminiscent of aging, but their impact on the host’s biological age remains unclear. Using a computational approach, we estimated the biological age of Drosophila melanogaster flies infected with various enteric viruses and demonstrated that enteric viral infections accelerate biological aging. Comparative analysis...

Persistent viral infections have been assumed to have minimal fitness costs for insects. Using Drosophila melanogaster , we established persistent mono-infections with four different enteric RNA viruses (Drosophila A virus, Drosophila C virus, Bloomfield virus, and Nora virus) and observed that these infections significantly reduce fly survival, al...

Arabidopsis thaliana is more susceptible to certain viruses during its later developmental stages. The differential responses and the mechanisms behind this development-dependent susceptibility to infection are still not fully understood. Here we explored the outcome of a viral infection at different host developmental stages by studying the respon...

C. elegans animals with a compromised pharynx accumulate bacteria in their intestinal lumen and activate a transcriptional response that includes anti-bacterial response genes. In this study, we demonstrate that animals with defective pharynxes are resistant to Orsay virus (OrV) infection. This resistance is observed for animals grown on Escherichi...

The discovery of Orsay virus (OrV), the first virus infecting wild populations of Caenorhabditis elegans , has boosted studies of viral immunity pathways in this nematode. Considering the many advantages that C. elegans offers for fundamental research in host-pathogen interactions, this pathosystem has high potential to become a model system for ex...

The model organism Caenorhabditis elegans is susceptible to infection by obligate intracellular pathogens, specifically microsporidia and viruses. These intracellular pathogens infect intestinal cells, or, for some microsporidia, epidermal cells. Strikingly, intestinal cell infections by viruses or microsporidia trigger a common transcriptional res...

Plant viruses account for enormous agricultural losses worldwide, and the most effective way to combat them is to identify genetic material conferring plant resistance to these pathogens. Aiming to identify genetic associations with responses to infection, we screened a large panel of Arabidopsis thaliana natural inbred lines for four disease-relat...

Arabidopsis thaliana is more susceptible to certain viruses during its later developmental stages. The reasons for this age-dependent susceptibility are not fully understood. Here we explored the possible causes by studying the A. thaliana infection response to turnip mosaic virus at three developmental stages: vegetative, bolting and flowering. We...

This study examines the specificity of adaptation of lineages of turnip mosaic virus that were experimentally evolved from naïve and preadapted strains to Arabidopsis thaliana plants at various plant developmental stages. We conducted a cross-infection experiment involving three plant developmental stages and assessed the progression of disease and...

Plant viruses account for enormous agricultural losses worldwide, and the most effective way to combat them is to identify genetic material conferring plant resistance to these pathogens. Aiming to identify genetic associations with responses to infection, we screened a large panel of Arabidopsis thaliana natural inbred lines for four disease-relat...

Plant viruses account for enormous agricultural losses worldwide, and the most effective way to combat them is to identify genetic material conferring plant resistance to these pathogens. Aiming to identify genetic associations with responses to infection, we screened a large panel of Arabidopsis thaliana natural inbred lines for four disease-relat...

The microbes associated with an organism play a pivotal role in modulating their host susceptibility to viral infections. However, the influence of individual microbes on viral infections is not well understood. Here, we examined the impact of 67 naturally bacterial associates on Caenorhabditis elegans susceptibility to Orsay virus. Our findings re...

Viruses are highly evolvable biological entities capable of wreaking havoc on our society. Therefore, a better understanding of virus evolution is important for two main reasons: (i) it will lead to better management of current diseases and prevention of future ones, and (ii) it will contribute to a better understanding of evolutionary processes an...

Plant viruses account for enormous agricultural losses worldwide, and the most effective way to combat them is to identify genetic material conferring plant resistance to these pathogens. Aiming to identify genetic associations with responses to infection, we screened a large panel of Arabidopsis thaliana natural inbred lines for four disease-relat...

Viruses are obligate pathogens that entirely rely on their host resources to complete their infectious cycle. The availability of such resources depends upon external and internal factors, being host age one of the most relevant ones. The interplay between host age and virus evolution has not been thoroughly studied in plants. Here, we have used th...

It is assumed that host genetic variability for susceptibility to infection conditions virus evolution. Differences in host susceptibility can drive a virus to diversify into strains that track different defense alleles (e.g., antigenic diversity) or to infect only the most susceptible genotypes. Here, we have studied how variability in host defens...

The microorganisms associated with an organism, the microbiome, have a strong and wide impact in their host biology. In particular, the microbiome modulates both the host defense responses and immunity, thus influencing the fate of infections by pathogens. Indeed, this immune modulation and/or interaction with pathogenic viruses can be essential to...

Viruses lie in a continuum between generalism and specialism depending on their ability to infect more or less hosts. While generalists are able to successfully infect a wide variety of hosts, specialists are limited to one or a few. Even though generalists seem to gain an advantage due to their wide host range, they usually pay a pleiotropic fitne...

The family Tospoviridae of the order Bunyavirales is constituted of tri-segmented negative-sense single-stranded RNA viruses that infect plants and are also able to replicate in their insect vectors in a persistent manner. The family is composed of a single genus, Orthotospovirus, whose type species is Tomato spotted wilt orthotospovirus. Previous...

Pathogens can be classified as generalists or specialists depending on their host breadth. While generalists are able to successfully infect a wide variety of host species, the host range of specialists is limited to a few related species. Even though generalists seem to gain an advantage due to their wide host range, they usually pay a cost in ter...

Growth is a complex trait influenced by multiple genes that act at different moments during the development of an organism. This makes it difficult to spot its underlying genetic mechanisms. Since plant growth is intimately related to the effective leaf surface area (ELSA), identifying genes controlling this trait will shed light on our understandi...

Environmental conditions are an important factor driving pathogens evolution. Here we explore the effects of drought stress in plant virus evolution. We evolved a potyvirus in well-watered and drought conditions in Arabidopsis thaliana accessions that differ in their response to virus infection. Virus adaptation occurred in all accessions independe...

Robustness is the preservation of the phenotype in the face of genetic and environmental perturbations. It has been argued that robustness must be an essential fitness component of RNA viruses owed to their small and compacted genomes, high mutation rates and living in ever-changing environmental conditions. Given that genetic robustness might hamp...

The family Tospoviridae , a member of the Bunyavirales order, is constituted of tri-segmented negative-sense single-stranded RNA viruses that infect plants and are also able of replicating in their insect vectors in a persistent manner. The family is composed of a single genus, the Orthotospovirus , whose type species is Tomato spotted wilt virus (...

Phenotypic plasticity enables organisms to survive in the face of unpredictable environmental stress. Intimately related to the notion of phenotypic plasticity is the concept of the reaction norm that places phenotypic plasticity in the context of a genotype-specific response to environmental gradients. Whether reaction norms themselves evolve and...

RNA virus high mutation rate is a double-edged sword. At the one side, most mutations jeopardize proteins functions; at the other side, mutations are needed to fuel adaptation. The relevant question then is the ratio between beneficial and deleterious mutations. To evaluate this ratio, we created a mutant library of the 6K2 gene of tobacco etch pot...

Predicting viral emergence is difficult due to the stochastic nature of the underlying processes and the many factors that govern pathogen evolution. Environmental factors affecting the host, the pathogen and the interaction between both are key in emergence. In particular, infectious disease dynamics are affected by spatiotemporal heterogeneity in...

So far, Caenorhabditis elegans has been used as model organism in many different fields of study, but has been seldomly used as experimental host in virology studies. The present work seeks to evaluate the potential of the nematode to support the replication of the thrip-transmitted plant ambisense ssRNA virus Tomato spotted wilt virus (TWSV; genus...

El río Fragoso nace en la zona de A Franqueira a 942 m de altura y desembova en el río Limia, en Ourense, España. Durante los trabajos de muestreo realizados entre 2001 y 2002, ejercía de río control, comparado con otros cercanos regulados por minicentrales hidroeléctricas, ya que su cauce no estaba alterado ni regulado. En la actualidad y desde el...

The mode in which sexual organisms choose mates is a key evolutionary process, as it can have a profound impact on fitness and speciation. One way to study mate choice in the wild is by measuring trait correlation between mates. Positive assortative mating is inferred when individuals of a mating pair display traits that are more similar than those...

Dende a aparición da agricultura no Neolítico o cultivo da terra transformou associedades humanas. Gracias a mellora e a innovación das técnicas agrícolasconseguiuse ó longo da historia dar alimento á crecente poboación humana.Agora encontrámonos ante un novo desafío: a partir da mesma superficiecultivable que no século anterior débese obter alimen...