Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2021 Feb;102(2):001543.
doi: 10.1099/jgv.0.001543.

ICTV Virus Taxonomy Profile: Pospiviroidae

Affiliations

ICTV Virus Taxonomy Profile: Pospiviroidae

Francesco Di Serio et al. J Gen Virol. 2021 Feb.

Abstract

Members of the family Pospiviroidae have single-stranded circular RNA genomes that adopt a rod-like or a quasi-rod-like conformation. These genomes contain a central conserved region that is involved in replication in the nucleus through an asymmetric RNA-RNA rolling-circle mechanism. Members of the family Pospiviroidae lack the hammerhead ribozymes that are typical of viroids classified in the family Avsunviroidae. The family Pospiviroidae includes the genera Apscaviroid, Cocadviroid, Coleviroid, Hostuviroid and Pospiviroid, with >25 species. This is a summary of the ICTV Report on the family Pospiviroidae, which is available at ictv.global/report/pospiviroidae.

Keywords: ICTV Report; Pospiviroidae; taxonomy.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that there are no conflicts of interest.

Figures

Fig. 1.
Fig. 1.
Rod-like structure models for viroids, The positions of the central conserved region (CCR), the terminal conserved region (TCR) and the terminal conserved hairpin (TCH) are indicated by shading. The sequence-specific TCH and TCR elements have never been found together in the same viroid.
Fig. 2.
Fig. 2.
Phylogenetic tree of viroid sequences. Maximum-likelihood analysis was conducted with megax [6]. Nodes are labelled with bootstrap support (1000 replicates) where this was >70%.

References

    1. Steger G, Perreault JP. Structure and associated biological functions of viroids. Adv Virus Res. 2016;94:141–172. - PubMed
    1. Giguère T, Raj Adkar-Purushothama C, Perreault J-P. Comprehensive secondary structure elucidation of four genera of the family Pospiviroidae . PLoS One. 2014;9:e98655. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0098655. - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. López-Carrasco A, Flores R. Dissecting the secondary structure of the circular RNA of a nuclear viroid in vivo : A “naked” rod-like conformation similar but not identical to that observed in vitro . RNA Biol. 2017;14:1046–1054. doi: 10.1080/15476286.2016.1223005. - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Flores R, Gago-Zachert S, Serra P, Sanjuán R, Elena SF. Viroids: survivors from the RNA world? Annu Rev Microbiol. 2014;68:395–414. doi: 10.1146/annurev-micro-091313-103416. - DOI - PubMed
    1. Di Serio F, Flores R, Verhoeven JTJ, Li S-F, Pallás V, et al. Current status of viroid taxonomy. Arch Virol. 2014;159:3467–3478. doi: 10.1007/s00705-014-2200-6. - DOI - PubMed

Publication types