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An Amino Acid Deletion in Wheat streak mosaic virus Capsid Protein Distinguishes a Homogeneous Group of European Isolates and Facilitates Their Specific Detection

The tritimovirus Wheat streak mosaic virus (WSMV) is widespread throughout the world and represents a severe threat to cereal crop production. To increase knowledge of genetic diversity of WSMV in Europe, until now scarce, capsid protein (CP) sequences of several Czech, French, Italian, Slovak, and Turkish isolates have been determined. A multiple alignment of CP nucleotide sequences using available WSMV sequences revealed only limited sequence variation among 3 previously sequenced European isolates and the 14 European isolates sequenced in this study. Moreover, these isolates were characterized by an identical 3-nucleotide deletion, resulting in the lack of the Gly₂₇₆₁ codon within the CP region of the polyprotein. The results indicate that this monophyletic group of isolates (designated as WSMV-ΔE) is common and widely dispersed throughout the European continent. The close relationship of WSMV-ΔE isolates implies a single common ancestor and, presumably, subsequent dispersal throughout Europe from a single focus. We developed two simple assays for specific and accurate detection of WSMV-ΔE isolates. First, a conserved ClaI restriction site in the core CP gene sequence unique to WSMV-ΔE isolates was used for restriction fragment length polymorphism analysis of amplified polymerase chain reaction (PCR) products. Second, the conserved and specific codon gap in WSMV-ΔE sequences was used as a target to design specific primers functional in one-step reverse-transcription PCR detection of WSMV-ΔE isolates.