title: Australian monocot-infecting mastrevirus diversity rivals that in Africa.
abstract: Monocotyledonous plant infecting mastreviruses (family Geminiviridae) have been found in the Old World. The greatest diversity of these viruses has been found in Africa but this may simply reflect the more extensive sampling that has been done there. To provide a better understanding of mastrevirus diversity in Australia, we have sequenced the genomes of 41 virus isolates found in naturalised and native grasses and identified four new species in addition to the four previously characterised species. Two of these species, which were recovered from a single Sporobolus plant, are highly divergent and are most closely related to the African streak viruses. This, coupled with the discovery of divergent dicotyledonous plant infecting mastreviruses in Australia brings into question the hypothesis that mastreviruses may have originated in Africa. We found that the patterns of inter- and intra-species recombination and the recombination hotspots mirror those found in both their African monocot-infecting counterparts and dicot-infecting mastrevirus.
authors: School of Biological Sciences, University of Canterbury, Christchurch 8140, New Zealand.
authors: Simona
authors: S
authors: Kraberger
authors: John E
authors: JE
authors: Thomas
authors: Andrew D W
authors: AD
authors: Geering
authors: Anisha
authors: A
authors: Dayaram
authors: Daisy
authors: D
authors: Stainton
authors: James
authors: J
authors: Hadfield
authors: Matthew
authors: M
authors: Walters
authors: Kathleen S
authors: KS
authors: Parmenter
authors: Sharon
authors: S
authors: van Brunschot
authors: David A
authors: DA
authors: Collings
authors: Darren P
authors: DP
authors: Martin
authors: Arvind
authors: A
authors: Varsani
mesh_terms: D001315:Australia; D016000:Cluster Analysis; D004279:DNA, Viral / Q000737:chemistry / Q000235:genetics*; D017791:Geminiviridae / Q000145:classification* / Q000235:genetics* / Q000302:isolation & purification; D014644:Genetic Variation; D008969:Molecular Sequence Data; D010802:Phylogeny; D006109:Poaceae / Q000821:virology*; D017422:Sequence Analysis, DNA
chemical_list: D004279:DNA, Viral