The movement protein (MP) of Prunus necrotic ringspot virus (PNRSV) is required for viral transport. Previous analysis with MPs of other members of the family Bromoviridae has shown that the C-terminal part of these MPs plays a critical role in the interaction with the cognate coat protein (CP) and in cell-to-cell transport. Bimolecular fluorescence complementation and overlay analysis confirm an interaction between the C-terminal 38 aa of PNRSV MP and its cognate CP. Mutational analysis of the C-terminal region of the PNRSV MP revealed that its C-terminal 38 aa are dispensable for virus transport, however, the 4 aa preceding the dispensable C terminus are necessary to target the MP to the plasmodesmata and for the functionality of the protein. The capacity of the PNRSV MP to use either a CP-dependent or a CP-independent cell-to-cell transport is discussed.Prunus necrotic ringspot virus (PNRSV) belongs to the genus Ilarvirus (family Bromoviridae). The PNRSV genome consists of three, single-stranded, plus-sense RNAs. RNAs 1 and 2 encode P1 and P2 polymerase protein subunits, respectively. RNA 3 directly encodes the movement protein (MP), whereas the coat protein (CP) is synthesized via a subgenomic RNA 4 (Sánchez-Navarro & Pallás, 1997).The MP of PNRSV belongs to the 30K superfamily (Melcher, 2000). The C-terminal region of the 30K MPs has a predicted random coiled secondary structure (Melcher, 2000). The alfalfa mosaic virus (AMV) MP specifically interacts with its cognate CP through its Cterminal region and in the cowpea mosaic virus (CPMV) MP this region is the virion-binding domain (Carvalho et al., 2003; Sánchez-Navarro et al., 2006). In the case of the MP of the cauliflower mosaic virus (CaMV), the C terminus interacts indirectly with the cognate CP via the virion-associated protein (Stavolone et al., 2005). The Cterminal region of the corresponding MPs of the cucumber mosaic virus (CMV) and the brome mosaic virus (BMV) controls the requirement of the CP for intercellular movement (Nagano et al., 2001; Sánchez-Navarro & Bol, 2001;Takeda et al., 2004). Deletion of the C-terminal 55 aa of the tobacco mosaic virus (TMV) MP does not affect the cell-to-cell transport of the TMV nor the cell-wall localization of the protein (Berna et al., 1991). In the present study, we have analysed the role of cell-to-cell movement of the PNRSV MP C-terminal region by mutational analysis. We also analysed the putative MP-CP interaction by bimolecular fluorescence complementation (BiFC) and overlay assays, respectively. Finally, we present data indicating that the capacity of the PNRSV MP to mediate virus transport is independent of the MP-CP interaction.Due to the lack of PNRSV infectious clones, a chimera cDNA3 construct between AMV and PNRSV that expresses the green fluorescent protein (GFP), the wild-type (wt) PNRSV MP fused in-frame to the C-terminal 44 aa of AMV MP (A44) and the AMV CP was used (clone pGFP/ MP-A44/CP in Sánchez-Navarro et al., 2006; hereafter pMP P -A44). The A44 is required for a specific interaction wit...