Virology lab, Floriculture Division, Institute of Himalayan Bioresource Technology, Palampur-176061, Himachal Pradesh.
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.
The variability in the coat protein gene of Cucumber mosaic virus (CMV) isolates from various lilium species and hybrids namely L. longiflorum, L. tigrinum, Asiatic hybrid and Oriental hybrid lilies was studied by sequence comparison of ~900bp regions spanning the entire coat protein, inter-cistronic regions and 3’-UTR. Homology data of the coat protein showed that the Indian isolates share 73–98% homology with the other established CMV isolates. CMV isolate characterized from Asiatic hybrid lily showed highest homology with subgroup II isolates (94–97%), whereas only 73–76% homology was observed with those belonging to subgroup I. Similarly, other three isolates from L. longiflorum, L. tigrinum and Oriental hybrid lily showed 91–98% amino acid sequence homology with subgroup I of CMV whereas, they showed only 74–76% sequence homology with subgroup II. Based on the criteria for differentiation of CMV isolates into various subgroups, all the Indian isolates fall in subgroup I, except the one characterized from Asiatic Hybrid lily, which falls into subgroupII. Other reports from the world for CMV isolates from these lilies place CMV isolates in subgroup I. This is the first case of Asiatic hybrid lily CMV isolate belonging to subgroup II. Phylogenetic analysis revealed that the Indian CMV isolates from L. longiflorum, L. tigrinum and Oriental hybrid lily form separate cluster suggesting different class within subgroup IA of CMV. The complete genome of CMV infecting Lilium longiflorum was sequenced and submitted to the EMBL database with the accession numbers AJ879490, AJ865382 and AJ831578.
