New genes on the block: additional open reading frames in the genomes of geminiviruses.

Abstract

In their DNA genomes, the devastating plant-infecting geminiviruses contain partially overlapping genes which encode multifunctional proteins. For decades, geminiviral genomes were believed to contain four to eight open-reading frames (ORFs); now, a burst of independent works has found evidence for the existence of additional ORFs, revealing that their coding space remains to be fully explored.