Characteristics of a Lettuce mosaic virus isolate infecting lettuce in Korea

Lettuce mosaic virus (LMV) causes disease of plants in the family Asteraceae, especially lettuce crops. LMV isolates have previously been clustered in three main groups, LMV-Yar, LMV-Greek and LMV-RoW. The first two groups, LMV-Yar and LMV-Greek, have similar characteristics such as no seed-borne transmission and non-resistance-breaking. The latter one, LMV-RoW, comprising a large percentage of the LMV isolates contains two large subgroups, LMV-Common and LMV-Most. To date, however, no Korean LMV isolate has been classified and characterized. In this study, LMV-Muju, the Korean LMV isolate, was isolated from lettuce showing pale green and mottle symptoms, and its complete genome sequence was determined. Classification method of LMV isolates based on nucleotide sequence divergence of the NIb-CP junction showed that LMV-Muju was categorized as LMV-Common. LMV-Muju was more similar to LMV-O (LMV-Common subgroup) than to LMV-E (LMV-RoW group but not LMV-Common subgroup) even in the amino acid domains of HC-Pro associated with pathogenicity, and in the CI and VPg regions related to ability to overcome resistance. Taken together, LMV-Muju belongs to the LMV-Common subgroup, and is expected to be a seed-borne, non-resistance-breaking isolate. According to our analysis, all other LMV isolates not previously assigned to a subgroup were also included in the LMV-RoW group.