Nucleotide sequence of a satellite RNA of a strain of cucumber mosaic virus associated with a tomato fruit necrosis.

A strain of cucumber mosaic cucumovirus (CMV) named CMVTfn has been isolated in Campania (Southern Italy) from tomato plants showing symptoms of fruit necrosis. Agarose-gel electrophoretic and molecular hybridization analysis showed that Tfn-CMV purified from naturally infected plants contained CMV genomic RNAs 1-4 and a satellite RNA named Tfn-CARNA 5 (CARNA 5 for CMV-associated RNA 5). The virus was then cultured in Rutgers tomato and purified by a standardized procedure. We report here the nucleotide sequence of this previously uncharacterized CMV satellite RNA (Figure 1). Tfn-CARNA 5 was purified from polyacrylamide gel and its nucleotide sequence determined using the dideoxy-chain termination method on both strands of four different pUC-cloned cDNA templates, and by partial enzymic cleavage of 3' and decapped 5'-end of labelled RNA. The 3' half of Tfn-CARNA 5 does not contain the 'necrogenic consensus' reported for other CMV satellite RNAs and this is in agreement with its biological properties.