Molecular Evidence That Strain BV-15 of Peanut Stunt Cucumovirus Is a Reassortant Between Subgroup I and II Strains

In Northern hybridization assays, RNA1 of peanut stunt virus (PSV) strain BV-15 hybridized strongly with a cloned cDNA probe to RNA1 from strain PSV-W (subgroup II). Cloned probes to PSV-W RNA2 and RNA3, however, did not hybridize with the corresponding RNAs from strain BV-15. The complete nucleotide sequence of PSV-BV-15 RNA2 has been determined, and sequence comparison analysis showed that it is closely related to PSV subgroup I strains; the percent nucleotide sequence identity between PSV-BV-15 RNA2 and RNA2 sequences from PSV subgroup I and II strains were 90.5 and 75%, respectively. The possibility that PSV-BV-15 RNA2 may contain short regions derived from a subgroup II strain (i.e., represent a mosaic structure indicative of recombination) was investigated. Results indicated, however, that the entire PSV-BV-15 RNA2 sequence is derived from a subgroup I strain. PSV-BV-15 RNA3 has previously been shown to belong to subgroup I strains. These results thus establish that PSV strain BV-15 is a natural reassortant between PSV subgroups I and II strains. A reverse transcription-po-lymerase chain reaction assay is proposed for differentiating between this reassortant strain and PSV strains in subgroups I and II.