Molecular evidence and sequence analysis of a natural reassortant between cucumber mosaic virus subgroup IA and II strains.

Cucumber mosaic virus (CMV) is a tripartite RNA virus and has been divided into three subgroups, named IA, IB, and II. Some studies have found a few natural reassortants between CMV subgroups, although reassortment between CMV subgroups is infrequent. In our present work, a CMV reassortant, named CMV-Tsh, was obtained from a tomato plant. The complete sequence of CMV-Tsh genomic RNAs has been determined and analyzed. The results of sequence comparisons and phylogenetic analyses revealed that CMV-Tsh RNAs 1 and 3 are derived from one or two CMV subgroup II strain(s), while RNA2 is derived from a CMV subgroup IA strain. A PCR and restriction enzyme analysis-based method was developed to analyze the possibility of mixed infection by CMV strains of different subgroup in the CMV-Tsh-infected tomato plant. The results of the restriction enzyme analysis proved that CMV-Tsh is the unique strain in the tomato plant. Taken together, CMV-Tsh is a natural reassortant having CMV subgroup IA RNA2 and subgroup II RNAs 1 and 3.