FIRST REPORT OF AGERATUM YELLOW VEIN VIRUS ASSOCIATED WITH A NEW BETASATELLITE INFECTING CARICA PAPAYA IN CHINA

Abstract

A Carica papaya plant exhibiting downward curling of the leaves and yellow vein was observednear Sanya (Hainan Province, China). Total DNA was extracted from three symptomatic samples (P1, P2 and P3) for amplifying part of begomovirus DNA-A and DNA-B using the primer pair PA/PB and PBL1v2040/PCRc1 (Zhou et al., 2001; Rojas et al., 1993). No DNA-B was detected but a ca. 500 bp DNA-A fragment amplified from all samples was cloned, sequenced and shown to have 100% nucleotide (nt) identity. The primer pair BE1 (5’-GGTACGCCGACGGCTGAACTTC-3’) and BE2 (5’-CGTACCTTGGATGCGGGAGTTGAAATG-3’) was designed to amplify the full-length DNA-A from P3, which was determined to be 2,759 nt in length (GenBank accession No. KM051844) and showed a nt sequence identity (99%) with Ageratum yellow vein virus (AYVV) from Lycopersicon esculentum (KC810890). When alpha- and betasatellite molecules were looked for using the universal primer pairs DNA101/102, UN101/102 and Beta01/02 by PCR, respectively (Briddon et al., 2002; Bull et al., 2003), no alphasatellite was detected, but a betasatellite amplicon of ca. 1.3 kb was obtained from the three samples. The complete betasatellite sequence from P2 (1,350 nt, GenBank accession No. KJ642219), shares the highest nucleotide sequence identity (66.6%) with Tomato leaf curl China betasatellite (GenBank accession No. AJ704617), and appears to be a new satellite species, for whichthe name Papaya leaf curl China betasatellite [China: Hainan: 2014] is proposed. To our knowledge, this is the first report of AYVV associated with a new betasatellite infecting papaya and their first identification in China.