AGO2 and infection: Our results showed that the majority of these genes were downregulated in MAYV infected (Fig. 5g and Supplementary Data 1) and uninfected Ago2−/− mutants (Supplementary Fig. 7c, d and Supplementary Data 2), and a reduction of up to 36.6% at 4 dpi with MAYV (Fig. 5h) and 24.59% without infection (Supplementary Fig. 7e), suggesting that impact of Ago2 disruption on histone abundance is independent of viral infection and downregulation of histones may be responsible for the impaired DNA replication and repair mechanisms in Ago2−/− mutants.