Metagenomic Sequencing of Maize Reveals Abundant Genomic RNA of a Comovirus, a Genus Previously Known to Infect Only Dicots.

ABSTRACT: To better understand the diversity of viral pathogens in Türkiye, a major exporter of cereals in Europe, we performed high-throughput sequencing of total RNA from maize plants collected in the Trakya region. Certain maize plants exhibiting mosaic and mottle symptoms, gathered from Tekirdağ province in Trakya, yielded large numbers of reads corresponding to the genome of a divergent strain of a comovirus, which corresponds to turnip ringspot virus (TuRSV), a recognized species of the genus Comovirus. This finding is unexpected because all known comoviruses infect only dicotyledonous species, and the known host range of TuRSV has been limited to plants in the Brassicaceae family. The nearly complete and partial nucleotide sequences of the bipartite genome of the maize isolate, as named TuRSV

SUBMITTER: Ilbagı H 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC12488379 | biostudies-literature | 2025 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature