Long-distance movement of helical multipartite phytoviruses: keep connected or die?

All living organisms have to preserve genome integrity to ensure the survival of progeny generations. Viruses, though often regarded as ‘non living’, protect their nucleic acids from biotic and abiotic stresses, ranging from nuclease action to radiation-induced adducts. When the viral genome is split into multiple segments, preservation of at least one copy of each segment is required. While segmented and monopartite viruses use an all-in-one strategy, multipartite viruses have to address in the cell at least one of each viral particle in which the split positive stranded RNA genome is individually packaged. Here, we review and discuss the biology of multipartite helical RNA phytoviruses to outline our current hypothesis on a coordinated genomic RNA network RNP complex that preserves an all-in-one strategy and genome integrity.