School of Biotechnology, Madurai Kamaraj University, Madurai-625021, Tamil Nadu.
Abstracts of the papers presented at the 16th Annual Convention and International Symposium of Indian Virological Society on “Management of Vector-Borne Viruses” at International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT), Patancheru-502324, Hyderabad, India, February 7–10, 2006.
Yellow mosaic disease is a major threat to grain legume productivity in India, amounting to a yield loss of $300 millions per year taking blackgram, mungbean and soybean together. Yield loss due to yellow mosaic disease in soybean in India was 105,000 metric tons in 1996. Yellow mosaic disease of soybean was first reported in 1960 from India. Preliminary studies pointed to a whitefly-transmitted geminivirus as the causative agent of the disease. We have determined the complete nucleotide sequences of two soybean – infecting geminiviruses from the central and southern parts of India. Detailed sequence analysis indicated that the soybean-infecting geminiviruses belong to two different species: the central Indian isolate belongs to Mungbean yellow mosaic India virus (MYMIV) species, designated as MYMIV-Sb [MP] and the south Indian isolate belongs to Mungbean yellow mosaic virus (MYMV) species, designated as MYMV-Sb [Mad]. Both the MYMIV-Sb [MP] and MYMV-Sb [Mad] are typical bipartite begomoviruses, where the DNA B encodes two movement proteins, designated as nuclear shuttling protein (NSP) and cell-to-cell movement protein (MP). Subcellular localization and DNA binding properties of MP of MYMIV-Sb [MP] were investigated. Ectopically expressed GFP-MP fusion was used for analyzing its subcellular distribution. To study the nucleic acid recognition properties, the MP of MYMIV-Sb [MP] was expressed in E. coli as maltose binding protein (MBP) fusion. DNA recognition properties of MBP-MP fusion protein was analyzed using electrophoretic mobility shift assay (EMSA). The results of these analyses will be discussed.
