ABSTRACT
A 13 amino acid residue insertion was found in the N-terminal region of the coat protein of several Maize dwarf mosaic virus isolates (MDMV). These insertions seem to be the result of a direct duplication event, but differ in some positions. In order to evaluate the influence of the insertion on the RNA secondary structure and stability, the RNA secondary structures and minimum free energies (MFE) of all existing MDMV coat protein sequences were estimated using three different softwares, the Vienna RNA Package, NUPACK, and UNAFold, and compared to the secondary structure and MFE of various random sequence collections preserving the nucleotide distribution of MDMV. The bioinformatic analysis showed that the insertion stabilizes the RNA structure of the coat protein gene.
Subject(s)
Capsid Proteins/chemistry , Mutagenesis, Insertional , Potyvirus/chemistry , RNA Stability , RNA, Viral/chemistry , Capsid Proteins/genetics , Computational Biology , Nucleic Acid Conformation , Potyvirus/genetics , RNA, Viral/geneticsABSTRACT
The genetic diversity of the coat-protein (CP) region and the untranslated C-terminal region (3'UTR) of Maize dwarf mosaic virus (MDMV) was analyzed to evaluate the variability between isolates (inter-isolate sequence diversity). The results of inter-isolate sequence diversity analysis showed that the diversity of the MDMV CP gene is fairly high (p-distance: up to 0.136). During sequence analysis, a 13 amino-acid residue insertion and an 8 amino-acid residue deletion were found within the N-terminal region of the CP gene. The phylogenetic analysis showed that-unlike other potyvirus species in this subgroup-the MDMV isolates could not be distinguished on the basis of their host plants or geographic origins.
