New phytoplasma subgroups within the 16SrI and 16SrVII groups detected in trees of Bogotá, Colombia

Phytoplasmas of groups 16SrI and 16SrVII are associated with a disease in urban trees in Bogotá, Colombia. The objective of this work was to study the diversity of these phytoplasmas, so 16S rRNA amplicons from the two groups were cloned and sequenced. Using the iPhyclassifier tool, sequences of 18 clones were assigned to subgroups 16SrI-B, and to three news subgroups with a restriction pattern similar to that of 16SrI-B and to that of 16SrI-K phytoplasmas. Phytoplasmas of the 16SrVII group were tentatively assigned to a new subgroup with a restriction pattern similar to that of the 16SrVII-A. These results suggest that the phytoplasmas that presently infecting the trees of Bogotà show great genetic variability probably indicating their divergence from original strains from other crops in Colombia such as corn (16SrI-B) and ash (16SrVII-A).