Cocksfoot mottle virus (CfMV) is a pathogenic plant virus

Plant virus

Plant viruses are viruses that affect plants. Like all other viruses, plant viruses are obligate intracellular parasites that do not have the molecular machinery to replicate without a host. Plant viruses are pathogenic to higher plants...

 belonging to the genus

Genus

In biology, a genus is a low-level taxonomic rank used in the biological classification of living and fossil organisms, which is an example of definition by genus and differentia...

 Sobemovirus

Sobemovirus

The Sobemovirus is a genus of a virus with no family. Virion capsids are non-enveloped, round and isometric, with a diameter of 25-33 nm. The genome is a single piece of linear, positive-sense, single-stranded RNA, 4100-5700 nucleotides in length.....

. The virus appears in southern and central England

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

. It is transmitted by beetle

Beetle

Coleoptera is an order of insects commonly called beetles. The word "coleoptera" is from the Greek , koleos, "sheath"; and , pteron, "wing", thus "sheathed wing". Coleoptera contains more species than any other order, constituting almost 25% of all known life-forms...

s Lema melanopa and L. lichenis and is common in crops of cocksfoot

Dactylis

Dactylis is a genus of grasses in the subfamily Pooideae, native to Europe, Asia, and northern Africa. They are known in English as cock's-foot or cocksfoot grasses, also sometimes as orchard grasses.-Taxonomy:...

 and cocksfoot/legume mixtures.

Molecular biology

CfMV's P1 protein, required for infection, has been found to interefere with RNAi

RNAI

RNAI is a non-coding RNA that is an antisense repressor of the replication of some E. coli plasmids, including ColE1. Plasmid replication is usually initiated by RNAII, which acts as a primer by binding to its template DNA. The complementary RNAI binds RNAII prohibiting it from its initiation role...

 pathways in plants species such as Nicotiana benthamiana

Nicotiana benthamiana

Nicotiana benthamiana is a close relative of tobacco and species of Nicotiana indigenous to Australia.The herbaceous plant is found amongst rocks on hills and cliffs throughout the northern regions of Australia. Variable in height and habit, the species may be erect and up to 1.5 metres or...

and Nicotiana tabacum

Nicotiana tabacum

Nicotiana tabacum, or cultivated tobacco, is a perennial herbaceous plant. It is found only in cultivation, where it is the most commonly grown of all plants in the Nicotiana genus, and its leaves are commercially grown in many countries to be processed into tobacco. It grows to heights between 1...

.

The polyprotein coat of CfMV is made up of two proteins, encoded by overlapping open reading frames (2a and 2b) which are transcribed through a ribosomal frameshift mechanism. This mechanism is reliant upon a small stem-loop

Stem-loop

Stem-loop intramolecular base pairing is a pattern that can occur in single-stranded DNA or, more commonly, in RNA. The structure is also known as a hairpin or hairpin loop. It occurs when two regions of the same strand, usually complementary in nucleotide sequence when read in opposite directions,...

structure and a 'slippery' repeat sequence which allows programmed ribosomal frameshifting.

External links

• ICTVdB - The Universal Virus Database: Cocksfoot mottle virus
• Family Groups - The Baltimore Method