Nucleotide sequence of the ononis yellow mosaic tymovirus genome

Abstract

The nucleotide sequence of the genome of ononis yellow mosaic tymovirus (OYMV) has been determined. The genome is single-stranded RNA, 6211 nucleotides long, and has three main open reading frames (ORFs), two of them overlapping. The largest ORF (nucleotides 179-5509) encodes a polyprotein of 1776 amino acid residues that has sequence similarities with polymerases of other viruses with RNA genomes. The smaller overlapping ORF (nucleotides 172-1965) encodes a protein of 597 amino acids of unknown function. The third ORF located at the 3' end of the genome (nucleotides 5487-6065) is the virion protein gene, and it overlaps by 20 nucleotides the 3' terminus of the largest ORF. The organization of the OYMV genome, its sequence, and the sequences of the protein it encodes are clearly similar to those of two other tymoviruses, turnip yellow mosaic virus and eggplant mosaic virus. The 5' terminal noncoding region of the OYMV genome is much longer than the same region of other tymoviral genomes and includes a direct duplication of a sequence of 21-23 nucleotides.