Melandrium yellow fleck bromovirus infects Arabidopsis thaliana and has genomic RNA sequence characteristics that are unique among bromoviruses

Melandrium yellow fleck bromovirus (MYFV) systemically infected Arabidopsis thaliana, although the susceptibility of several A. thaliana accessions to MYFV differed from their susceptibility to the other two bromoviruses infecting A. thaliana. We constructed full-length cDNA clones of MYFV genomic RNAs 1, 2, and 3 and determined their complete nucleotide sequences. Similar to Broad bean mottle bromovirus, (1) the 5′-terminal nucleotide of the MYFV genomic RNAs was adenine, and (2) the “D-arm” was absent from the tRNA-like structure in the 3′ untranslated regions (UTRs) of MYFV RNAs. As unique characteristics, MYFV RNA3 lacked the poly(A) tract in the intercistronic region and contained a directly repeated sequence of about 200 nucleotides and polypyrimidine tracts of heterogeneous lengths in the 5′ UTR. Co-infection experiments using RNA3 clones with or without the duplicated sequence demonstrated that the duplication contributed to the competitive fitness of the virus in Nicotiana benthamiana.