Inter- and Intramolecular Recombinations in the Cucumber Mosaic Virus Genome Related to Adaptation to Alstroemeria

Abstract

In four distinct alstroemeria-infecting cucumber mosaic virus (CMV) isolates, additional sequences of various lengths were present in the 3′ nontranslated regions of their RNAs 2 and 3, apparently the result of intra- and intermolecular recombination events. Competition experiments revealed that these recombined RNA 2 and 3 segments increased the biological fitness of CMV in alstroemeria.