title: Banana bract mosaic virus: characterisation using potyvirus specific degenerate PCR primers.
abstract: Banana bract mosaic (BBMV) is a relatively new, non-persistently aphid transmitted disease of bananas in the Philippines. Partially purified preparations from infected plants contained low numbers of flexuous virions, 660 to 760 nm in length, and a 38kDa protein, possibly the coat protein, which reacted with a general potyvirus antiserum in western blots. There were insufficient virions for conventional antiserum production or cDNA synthesis. Therefore, DNA was amplified using potyvirus-specific degenerate primers and reverse transcriptase PCR. The PCR products were cloned, sequenced and analysed and contained a 5' open reading frame of up to 150 amino acids and a 3' untranslated region of up to 190 nucleotides which were clearly related to the C-terminal half of the coat proteins and the 3' untranslated regions, respectively of potyviruses. The BBMV open reading frame amino acid sequence was most similar to the C-terminal half of the maize dwarf mosaic potyvirus coat protein (71.3% similarity) and the BBMV 3' untranslated region was most similar to that of ornithogalum mosaic potyvirus (39.6% similarity). Our results show that BBMV is a distinct potyvirus and also demonstrate the application of virus group specific primers in the characterisation of previously undescribed viruses.
authors.affiliation: Centre for Molecular Biotechnology, School of Life Science, Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, Australia.
authors.forename: M F
authors.initials: MF
authors.lastname: Bateson
authors.forename: J L
authors.initials: JL
authors.lastname: Dale
mesh_terms: D000595:Amino Acid Sequence; D001483:Base Sequence; D003001:Cloning, Molecular; D005638:Fruit / Q000821:virology*; D008969:Molecular Sequence Data; D016366:Open Reading Frames; D016133:Polymerase Chain Reaction; D017800:Potyvirus / Q000145:classification* / Q000235:genetics / Q000276:immunology