First report of a begomovirus associated with the common weed <i>Jatropha gossypifolia</i> in Jamaica

Abstract

Plants of the common weed Jatropha gossypifolia with yellow mosaic symptoms typical of geminivirus infection are often found growing among crops such as tomato, bean and pepper in Jamaica. These crops are known to be hosts to several begomoviruses in Jamaica (Roye et al., 1999). Leaf tissue of J. gossypifolia plants showing these symptoms was obtained from several agricultural sites, and genomic DNA was extracted using a modified Dellaporta method (Rojas et al., 1993). Low-stringency hybridization using a digoxygenin-labelled DNA-A probe of Bean golden yellow mosaic virus (BGYMV) from Jamaica produced positive signals for all 10 samples tested. PCR using degenerate primers PAC1v, 1978/PAV1c715 and PBC1v 2039/PBV1c800 (Rojas et al., 1993) amplified c. 1·3 kb fragments of the begomovirus DNA-A and DNA-B, respectively. The fragments obtained from both DNA-A and DNA-B were cloned and sequenced: 1419 nt for DNA-A (accession number AF324410) and 1410 nt for DNA-B (AF324411) were obtained. A similarity search (blastn) for the DNA-A sequence showed that it was most similar (90%) to Tobacco leaf rugose virus from Cuba over 870 nt, but showed no significant similarity to DNA sequences in the database for the DNA-B. Nucleotide sequence analysis of DNA-A and DNA-B fragments revealed that they shared an intergenic region of 188 nt that was 95% identical. Further DNA-A sequence analysis with several begomoviruses from the Western Hemisphere indicated that, over the entire 1·4 kb fragment, the virus was most similar to Sida golden mosaic virus from Jamaica (80%) and Tobacco leaf rugose virus (79%). The weed virus was distinct from several weed-infecting begomoviruses from the Latin American region, including begomoviruses associated with Sida, Rhychosia and Macroptilium spp. This is the first report of a begomovirus associated with J. gossypifolia in Jamaica, which has been tentatively named Jatropha mosaic virus (JMV). The authors would like to thank The Principal's New Initiative Programme at the University of the West Indies, Mona for funds to do this research.