The molecular characterization of the coat protein sequence and differentiation of CMV- subgroup I on tobacco from native flora in Turkey

Cucumber mosaic virus (CMV) has a broad plant-host range and a wide ecological zone distribution. Virus-like symptoms were observed on tobacco fields of Adıyaman province (Turkey) showing conspicuous mottling, greenish mosaic patterns and severe malformations of leaves. A total of forty tobacco samples tested positive against CMV by reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) using coat protein gene specific primers. Five randomly chosen CMV isolates were cloned into pGEM T-Easy vector and transformed into Escherichia coli JM109 strain. The recombinant bacterial clones containing insert-DNA were further purified and sequenced bidirectionally. In multiplex-RT-PCR studies carried out, it was found that all 40 CMV isolates belong to Subgroup I by resulting a 593 bp long DNA fragments. CMV subgroup IA was found to predominate in 4 out of 5 tobacco samples and CMV subgroup IB was found in 1 out of 5 CMV-positive samples by comparing the isolates with CMV reference isolates in phylogenetic tree. However, no Subgroup II sequences were found by multiplex RT-PCR using discriminating primers. The nucleic acid sequences were analyzed for the investigation of diversity of coat protein (CP) sequences of 5 CMV isolates. The sequence similarity ranged from 94.2-100% with the CMV subgroup I isolates infecting diverse plants in other regions of the world. The evolutionary tree revealed that the CMV IA Adıyaman isolates exhibited a genetic affinity with Australian and Spanish isolates. However, the CMV IB Adıyaman isolate showed a close genetic relationship with only the Australian isolates. To our knowledge, this study shows for the first time the occurrence of CMV IA and IB isolates infecting cultured tobacco plants in Adiyaman province.