Nucleotide sequence of cDNA of the tobacco mosaic virus RNA isolated in Korea.

A strain of tobacco mosaic virus (TMV) named TMV Korean common strain has been isolated in Suwon (South Korea) from Nicotiana tabacum NC82. The full-length double stranded cDNA of viral RNA has been synthesized and cloned. Three oligonucleotide primers (5' ACTTAAGAATATTAGAAT 3'; 5' GTAGTACTTGAACGAACA 3'; 5' TGGGCCCCTACCGGG 3'), which had been found to be complementary to each of TMV RNA residues 889-906, 3303-3320 and 6381-6395, respectively, were used to generate a cDNA library covering the entire TMV RNA sequence. The sequences of cDNA were determined in both directions using the Sanger's dideoxy chain termination method and the complete cDNA sequence of the TMV genomic RNA was reconstructed. The size of the fulllength cDNA was 6395 bases the same as that of TMV vulgare genomic RNA. The total genomic sequences of TMV vulgare strain (1) and TMV-L strain (2) have been reported. The cDNA sequence of TMV Korean common strain was quite different from that of the TMV-L isolated in Japan with about 80 homology, but was very similar to that of TMV vulgare with more than 99% (6354/6395 bases) sequence homology. The 41 nucleotides changed are listed in Table 1. Seven of the 41 nucleotides lead to change in the amino acid sequences. Four of the 41 nucleotides lead to change in the recognition sites of restriction enzymes.