A sensitive method for the quantification of virion-sense and complementary-sense DNA strands of circular single-stranded DNA viruses

Circular single-stranded DNA (ssDNA) viruses are the smallest viruses known to infect eukaryotes. High recombination and mutation rates have conferred these viruses with an evolutionary potential that has facilitated their emergence. Their damaging effects on livestock (circoviruses) and crops (geminiviruses and nanoviruses), and the ubiquity of anelloviruses in human populations and other mammalian species, have resulted in increased interest in better understanding their epidemiology and infection mechanisms. Circular ssDNA viral replication involves the synthesis of dsDNA intermediates containing complementary-sense (CS) and virion-sense (VS) strands. Precise quantification of VS and CS accumulation during viral infections can provide insights into the molecular mechanisms underlying viral replication and the host invasion process. Although qPCR protocols for quantifying viral molecules exist, none of them discriminate VS and CS strands. Here, using a two-step qPCR protocol we have quantified VS and CS molecule accumulation during the infection process of Tomato yellow leaf curl virus (TYLCV) and Tomato yellow leaf curl Sardinia virus (TYLCSV) (genus Begomovirus, family Geminiviridae). Our results show that the VS/CS strand ratio and overall dsDNA amounts vary throughout the infection process. Moreover, we show that these values depend on the virus-host combination, and that most CS strands are present as double-stranded molecules.