Molecular and Pathobiological Characterization of Sixty One Potato mop-top virus full-length cDNAs Reveals Great Variability of the Virus in the Center of Potato Domestication, Novel Genotypes and Evidence for Recombination (original) (raw)

Evolutionary divergence of potato mop-top virus (PMTV), a tri-partite single-stranded RNA virus, is exceptionally low, based on the analysis of sequences obtained from isolates from Europe, Asia, and North America. In general, RNA viruses exist as dynamic populations of closely related and recombinant genomes that are subjected to continuous genetic variation. The reason behind the low genetic variation of PMTV remains unclear. The question remains whether low variability is a shared property of all PMTV isolates or is a result of the limited number of isolates characterized so far. We hypothesized that higher divergence of the virus might exist in the Andean regions of South America, the center of potato domestication. Here we report high variability of PMTV isolates collected from twelve fields in three locations in the Andean region of Peru. To evaluate PMTV genetic variation in Peru, we generated full-length cDNA clones, which allowed reliable comparative molecular and pathobiol...