98% identical, 100% wrong: per cent nucleotide identity can lead plant virus epidemiology astray.

ABSTRACT: Short-form publications such as Plant Disease reports serve essential functions: the rapid dissemination of information on the geography of established plant pathogens, incidence and symptomology of pathogens in new hosts, and the discovery of novel pathogens. Many of these sentinel publications include viral sequence data, but most use that information only to confirm the virus' species. When researchers use the standard technique of per cent nucleotide identity to determine that the new sequence is closely related to another sequence, potentially erroneous conclusions can be drawn from the results. Multiple introductions of the same pathogen into a country are being ignored because researchers know fast-evolving plant viruses can accumulate substantial sequence divergence over time, even

SUBMITTER: Duffy S 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC2880110 | biostudies-literature | 2010 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature