ISHS Acta Horticulturae 472: XVII International Symposium Virus and Virus-Like Diseases of Temperate Fruit Crops
APRICOT LATENT VIRUS: A NOVEL STONE FRUIT PATHOGEN AND ITS RELATIONSHIP TO APPLE STEM PITTING VIRUS |
| Authors: | L. Nemchinov, A. Hadidi |
| Keywords: | fruit tree viruses, apricot latent virus, molecular diagnosis |
| Abstract:
Apricot latent virus (ALV) has been recently identified in Moldova from symptomless apricot plants and has been shown to produce yellow-green spots on leaves of infected peach seedlings. Molecular hybridization experiments using cRNA probe of apple stem pitting virus (ASPV) with tissue extracts from ALV-infected peach seedlings revealed that the genome of ALV contains nucleotide sequences related to that of ASPV. Western blot analysis indicated that ALV reacted with polyclonal antiserum against ASPV; however, the viral coat protein was different in size than that of ASPV. Subsequent extraction of double stranded RNA from ALV-infected peach leaves, followed by molecular cloning of synthesized cDNA and its sequencing, demonstrated that ALV is a novel virus, whose coat protein coding region contains ASPV-related sequence. The sequenced fragment (1444 nt) includes the putative coat protein gene and the 3' non-translated region of ALV. Its 5' portion (1–651 nt) is highly distinct but the 3' half is 77% identical to the corresponding region of ASPV. Based on the sequencing data obtained we have designed ALV-specific PCR-primers and developed a viral-specific cRNA probe; these diagnostic tools may be useful for virus detection in stone fruits and for the study of its epidemiology and geographical distribution. The sequence of ALV coat protein gene has been deposited at GenBank on April 1, 1998, as accession number AF057035. | |
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