Characterization of Cestrum yellow leaf curling virus: a new member of the family Caulimoviridae.

Cestrum yellow leaf curling virus (CmYLCV) has been characterized as the aetiological agent of the Cestrum parqui mosaic disease. The virus genome was cloned and the clone was proven to be infectious to C. parqui. The presence of typical viroplasms in virus-infected plant tissue and the information obtained from the complete genomic sequence confirmed CmYLCV as a member of the Caulimoviridae family. All characteristic domains conserved in plant pararetroviruses were found in CmYLCV. Its genome is 8253 bp long and contains seven open reading frames (ORFs). Phylogenetic analysis of the relationships with other members of the Caulimoviridae revealed that CmYLCV is closely related to the Soybean chlorotic mottle virus (SbCMV)-like genus and particularly to SbCMV. However, in contrast to the other members of this genus, the primer-binding site is located in the intercistronic region following ORF Ib rather than within this ORF, and an ORF corresponding to ORF VII is missing.

Cestrum yellow leaf curling virus (CmYLCV) promoter: a new strong constitutive promoter for heterologous gene expression in a wide variety of crops.

Appropriately regulated gene expression requires a suitable promoter. A number of promoters have been isolated and shown to be functional in plants, but only a few of them activate transcription of transgenes at high levels constitutively. We report here the cloning and characterization of a novel, constitutively expressed promoter isolated from Cestrum yellow leaf curling virus (CmYLCV), a double-stranded DNA plant pararetrovirus belonging to the Caulimoviridae family. The CmYLCV promoter is highly active in callus, meristems and vegetative and reproductive tissues in Arabidopsis thaliana, Nicotiana tabacum, Lycopersicon esculentum, Zea mays and Oryza sativa. Furthermore, the level of expression is comparable to, or higher than, that from the CaMV 35S, the 'super-promoter' or the maize ubiquitin 1 promoters, three frequently used promoters in agricultural biotechnology. The heritable, strong and constitutive activity in both monocotyledonous and dicotyledonous plants, combined with the extremely narrow CmYLCV host range, makes the CmYLCV promoter an attractive tool for regulating transgene expression in a wide variety of plant species.