Structure and functional relationships of satellite RNAs of cucumber mosaic virus.

Abstract

The first association of a satellite RNA with cucumber mosaic virus (CMV) was established by J.M. Kaper and colleagues (1976), who also showed that CMV containing this satellite RNA induced a lethal necrosis in the tomato (Kaper and Waterworth 1977). This initial discovery followed from earlier work in France concerning the search for the etiology of a lethal tomato necrosis that had appeared in the French Alsace in 1972 (Marrou et al. 1973). By 1974, it was clear that CMV was associated with the disease (Marrou and Duteil 1974). The epidemic did not re-occur for some time, although CMV strains outside of France apparently also contained necrogenic satellite RNAs (Kaper and Tousignant 1977; Kaper and Waterworth 1977). Nonetheless, the reappearance of the tomato-necrosis epidemic in Italy (Gallitelli et al. 1988), as well as in Japan (Kosaka et al. 1989) and Spain (Jorda et al. 1992), led to the unequivocal establishment of CMV strains containing necrogenic satellite RNAs as the causal agents of tomato necrosis.