Mixed Infection of 16S rDNA I and V Groups of Phytoplasma in a Single Jujube Tree

Abstract

Jujube trees infected with phytoplasma exhibit symptoms of typical witches' broom, such as yellowing, abnormally small leaves, short internodes and proliferation of shoots. A 1.2 kb fragment of the 16S rDNA from jujube phytoplasma was generated by R16F2n/R16R2 primer pair from earlier amplified P1/P7 PCR products of cloned jujube witches' broom phytoplasmas. Enzymatic restriction fragment length polymorphism (RFLP) and sequence analysis of 16S rDNA revealed that the jujube tree was infected with 16S rDNA I and V groups of phytoplasmas. Extensive comparative analyses of restriction enzyme profiles from Alu I, Hha I, Msp I, and Rsa I clearly classified the two into different phytoplasma groups. The phylogenie analyses based on 16S rDNA showed that the similarity of the two different clones was 87.5%. This is the first report of a mixed phytoplasmal infection in a single jujube tree.