biologia plantarum

Biologia plantarum 46:607-610, 2003 | DOI: 10.1023/A:1024884116113

Hop Latent Viroid (HLVd) Microevolution: An Experimental Transmission of HLVd "thermomutants" to Solanaceous Species

J. Matoušek¹

¹ Institute of Plant Molecular Biology, Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic, České Budějovice, Czech Republic

The possibility was examined whether the pool of sequence variants of HLVd which accumulated as progeny of "thermomutants" induced upon heat-treatment of hop could initiate infection of non-host solanaceous plants. It was found that HLVd microevolution led to the appearance of HLVd population in tomato. This viroid population was maintained at levels detectable by molecular hybridisation, showing the highest concentration in apical leaves. HLVd was further transferred from tomato to Nicotiana benthamiana, where distinct HLVd sequence variants appeared and were stably maintained at low levels. Our results show that replication of HLVd under heat stress resulted in the production of viroid quasispecies, potentially important for viroid evolution in so-called non host plants.

Keywords: viroid spreading; viroid detection; TGGE; RT PCR; Humulus lupulus; Lycopersicum esculentum; Nicotiana benthamiana

Subjects: hop latent viroid (HLVd), microevolution; Humulus lupulus; Lycopersicon esculentum; Nicotiana benthamiana; polymerase chain reaction (PCR); reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT PCR); temperature-gradient electrophoresis (TGGE); viroid spreading, and detection

Prepublished online: May 1, 2003; Published: December 1, 2003  Show citation