Reassessing species demarcation criteria in viroid taxonomy by pairwise identity matrices.

ABSTRACT: With a small, circular and non-protein coding RNA genome, viroids are the smallest infectious agents. They invade plants, which in turn may develop symptoms. Since their discovery about 50 years ago, more than thirty viroids have been reported and classified using as species demarcation less than 90 per cent sequence identity on the overall genome and evidence of biological divergence with respect to the closest related viroids. In the last few years, new viroids have been identified that infect latently their (frequently) woody hosts and have a narrow experimental hosts range, complicating and slowing down studies on their biology. As a consequence, several viroids are still waiting for classification. Moreover, the number of new viroids is expected to increase in the next years due to th

SUBMITTER: Chiumenti M 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7887442 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature