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Banana bunchy top virus (BBTV), family Nanaviridae, genus Babuvirus [4], is a single stranded DNA virus (ssDNA) that causes banana bunchy top disease (BBTD) in banana plants. It is the most common and most destructive of all viruses in these plants. Once it becomes established, it is extremely difficult to eradicate or contain. The virus is widespread throughout the Asia-Pacific region including Southeast Asia, the Philippines, Taiwan, most of the South Pacific islands, and parts of India and Africa. An infected plant does not bear fruit and, as a virus reservoir, has to be destroyed, thus an outbreak can have catastrophic effects on a plantation, leading to huge economic losses [3, 12].
Viral mitochondria of BBTV are icosahedral particles about 18~20 nm in diameter [2], and the genome comprises of ssDNA components termed DNA1 to DNA6 each of ~1.0~1.1 kb [2, 5, 6, 9].
The first of the satellite components were isolated in 1994 by Rey-Yuh et al and contained 4 putative coding regions, one of which encoded a replication initiation protein (Rep) [10]. In 2001, Horser found additional BBTV satellites DNA S1 and S2 with similar functions to BBTV DNA1 encoding Rep. However, the components of BBTV S1 and S2 differed from that of BBTV DNA1 in the CR-SL, internal gene, and TATA box. Most of these components were found in Asian isolates from Vietnam, Taiwan, Philippine, Tonga and Samoa [8]. Furthermore, Hermann reported promoter activation of S1 and S2 fusing to a -glucuronidase reporter gene. Transient assays indicated that both S1 and S2 derived promoters were active and had greater expression levels [7]. Satellite DNA was also discovered in the next year from a Vietnam isolate by Bell who named this component as DNA S3 [1].
In this research, we performed further study of BBTV satellite DNA isolated in Hainan Island China. We cloned and sequenced the DNA and performed analysis of the DNA sequence. Although it is 17 years since the first satellite DNA component was isolated, it is still unclear why these elements exist, and why they are only present in some but not all isolates.
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Satellite DNA from banana plants infected with BBTV was amplified by PCR and identified by 1%agarose gel electrophoresis. The result showed two DNA bands at about 1.0 kbp (Fig. 1) with consistent the expected size.
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We found a 238 nt UTR sequence within the 1093 nt of the full-length satellite DNA using the " ORF finder" online software (Fig. 2), and predicted 12 motifs by the Primer Premier 5.0 software (Table 1). These motifs are transcription regulation sites, ATF-CREB, CRE-ATE, E4TF1, IRF-IBP, NFY-CBF, and TATA box. E1A a cofactor for RAR beta, PU1 a lineage-specific transcription factor, archA and archB both global transcriptional regulation, bra a zinc finger transcription factor.
Table 1. Analysis UTR of satellite DNA by Primer Premier 5.0 software
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We compared satellite DNA translated protein sequence with DNA1 protein sequence [11] at the amino acid level (Table 2), and find difference in the number of amino acids, amino acid sequence and the stability coefficient between the two proteins.
Table 2. Prediction physical and chemical properties of proteins from satellite DNA and DNA1
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We next used online software tools to study the structure and function of the Rep protein in the DNA1 and satellite DNA, (Table 3), we found the two proteins differed in terms of phosphorylation sites, hydrophobicity and composition of secondary structure [11].
Table 3. Bioinformatics analysis of Rep protein of satellite DNA
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The online prediction of three-dimensional structure of Rep of satellite DNA using the SWISS-MODEL software package at the Expasy website, identified some similarities with the three-dimensional structure of the pcv2 protein of porcinecircovirus (Fig. 3), but the homology of amino acid sequences is only 12.88%.
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The satellite DNA component (ChiHQ616080) had the highest homology with TaiU12586, about 85.4%, also high homology with TaiFJ389724, TaiEU366175, Tail32166 and TaiBBU12587. It is interesting that the satellite DNA had a lower homology with its DNA1 counterpart (ChiHQ616074) than with other viruses such as CFDV, SCSV, MVDV and FBNYV EV1-93 (Fig. 4). However, all of these sequences have the same secondary structure in which the C-terminal belongs to the P-loop NTPase superfamily and the N-terminal is a member of the viral-Rep superfamily, which indicates a shared evolutionary history amongst these viruses.
Figure 4. N-J Phylogenetic tree of satellite DNA CFDV: Coconut foliar decay virus (NC_001465), SCSV: Subterranean clover stunt virus (U16731), FBNYV: faba bean necrotic yellows virus (AJ005968), MVDV: Milk vetch dwarf virus (AB000921), DNA1: BBTV Haikou 2 isolate (HQ616074), others are satellite DNA from different isolates (Three letter prefix indicates location; Vie – Vietnam, Tai -Taiwan).