Archives of Virology (2011) 156, 1209-1216

Charles Hagen, Alessandra Frizzi, John Kao, Lijie Jia, Mingya Huang, Yuanji Zhang and Shihshieh Huang (2011)
Using small RNA sequences to diagnose, sequence, and investigate the infectivity characteristics of vegetable-infecting viruses
Archives of Virology 156 (7), 1209-1216
Abstract: In a virus-infected plant, small interfering RNAs (siRNAs) corresponding to the viral genome form a large proportion of the small RNA population. It is possible to reassemble significant portions of the virus sequence from overlapping siRNA sequences and use these to identify the virus. We tested this technique with a resistance-breaking and a non-resistance-breaking strain of tomato spotted wilt virus (TSWV). We were able to assemble contigs covering 99% of the genomes of both viruses. The abundance of TSWV siRNAs allowed us to detect TSWV at early time points before the onset of symptoms, at levels too low for conventional detection. Combining traditional and bioinformatic detection methods, we also measured how replication of the resistance-breaking strain differed from the non-resistance-breaking strain in susceptible and resistant tomato varieties. We repeated this technique in identification of a squash-infecting geminivirus and also used it to identify an unspecified tospovirus.
(The abstract is excluded from the Creative Commons licence and has been copied with permission by the publisher.)
Link to article at publishers website
Database assignments for author(s): Charles Hagen

Research topic(s) for pests/diseases/weeds:
identification/taxonomy
molecular biology - genes

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Pest and/or beneficial records:

Beneficial	Pest/Disease/Weed	Crop/Product	Country	Quarant.
	Orthotospovirus tomatomaculae