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ARS Home » Southeast Area » Fort Pierce, Florida » U.S. Horticultural Research Laboratory » Subtropical Plant Pathology Research » Research » Publications at this Location » Publication #247527

Title: Strains of Citrus tristeza virus do not exclude superinfection by other strains of the virus

Author
item FOLIMONOVA, S.Y. - University Of Florida
item ROBERTSON, C.J. - University Of Florida
item SHILTS, T. - University Of Florida
item FOLIMONOV, A.S. - University Of Florida
item Hilf, Mark
item GARNSEY, S.M. - University Of Florida
item DAWSON, W.O. - University Of Florida

Submitted to: Journal of Virology
Publication Type: Peer Reviewed Journal
Publication Acceptance Date: 1/1/2010
Publication Date: 6/30/2010
Citation: Folimonova, S., Robertson, C., Shilts, T., Folimonov, A., Hilf, M.E., Garnsey, S., Dawson, W. 2010. Strains of Citrus tristeza virus do not exclude superinfection by other strains of the virus. Journal of Virology. 84:1314-1325.

Interpretive Summary: The research in this manuscript demonstrates that an existing infection of Citrus tristeza virus in a citrus tree will exclude a second infection by genetically identical isolates of CTV, but not by non-identical isolates. This work provides a possible genetic basis for selection of mild isolates of CTV to inoculate citrus trees for protection against severe isolates.

Technical Abstract: Superinfection exclusion or homologous interference, a phenomenon in which a primary viral infection prevents a secondary infection with the same or closely-related virus, has been observed commonly for viruses in various systems, including viruses of bacteria, plants, and animals. With plant viruses, homologous interference initially was used as a test of virus relatedness to define whether two virus isolates were ‘strains’ of the same virus or represented different viruses, and subsequently purposeful infection with a mild isolate was implemented as a protective measure against isolates of the virus causing severe disease. In this work we examined superinfection exclusion of Citrus tristeza virus (CTV), a positive-sense RNA closterovirus. Thirteen naturally occurring isolates of CTV representing 5 different virus strains and a set of isolates originated from virus constructs engineered based on an infectious cDNA clone of T36 isolate of CTV, including hybrids containing sequences from different isolates, were examined for their ability to prevent superinfection by another isolate of the virus. We show that superinfection exclusion occurred only between isolates of the same strain, but not between isolates of different strains. When isolates of the same strain were used for sequential plant inoculation, the primary infection provided complete exclusion of the challenge isolate, whereas isolates from heterologous strains appeared to have no effect on replication, movement or systemic infection by the challenge virus. Surprisingly, substitution of extended cognate sequences from isolates of the T68 or T30 strains into T36 did not confer the ability of resulting hybrid viruses to exclude superinfection by those donor strains. Overall, these results do not appear to be explained by mechanisms proposed previously for other viruses. Moreover, these observations bring an understanding of some previously unexplained fundamental features of CTV biology and, most importantly, build a foundation for the strategy of selecting mild isolates that would efficiently exclude severe virus isolates as a practical means to control CTV diseases.