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POSTERS: Proteomics / metabolomics / genomics

Genomic characterization of beet oak-leaf virus: a putative member of the family Rhabdoviridae
William Wintermantel - USDA-ARS. Dimitre Mollov- USDA, Zhangjun Fei- Boyce Thompson Institute, Laura Hladky- USDA-ARS

Beet oak-leaf virus (BOLV) is a soil-borne virus that induces oak-leaf shaped patterns on sugarbeet leaves and has been identified serologically from most US production regions. Symptomatic leaves collected from a sugarbeet plant at the USDA research station in Salinas, CA in 2016 were confirmed to be infected with BOLV by ELISA using antiserum previously developed against the original isolate of BOLV. To determine the sequence of BOLV, total RNA was extracted from leaves of this plant and examined by high throughput sequencing (HTS). HTS results revealed the presence of a varicosa-like virus, as well as Beet cryptic virus 1. Primers were designed to the varicosa-like virus sequences and used in RT-PCR, followed by direct sequencing, to obtain further genome sequence information. RT-PCR also confirmed the presence of the varicosa-like virus in the original extract used for HTS, and in archived, purified RNA samples of BOLV collected between 2008 and 2012. All amplicons shared 99-100% sequence identity, confirming the sequenced virus as BOLV. The L protein encoded by RNA1 shares 39% amino acid identity with that of Lettuce big vein associated virus (LBVaV; genus Varicosavirus, family Rhabdoviridae), its closest known relative, whereas the coat protein encoded on RNA2 shows only 30% identity with the LBVaV coat protein. These results demonstrate that BOLV is a new member of the family Rhabdoviridae, and a putative divergent member of the genus Varicosavirus.