Molecular and Biological Properties of a Putative Partitivirus from Jalape？o Pepper (Capsicum annuum L.)

screening 50 greenhouse grown jalape？o m (jm) (capsicum annuum) pepper plants for the presence of pepper cryptic virus - 1 (pcv-1) by dsrna extraction and analysis by electrophoresis, resulted in two jm lines. one was pcv-1 free and designated jm-n. the other one was pcv-1 positive and designated jm-p. both lines were susceptible to natural infection by cucumber mosaic virus and its satellite rna. pcv-1 was not graft transmitted but it was transmitted both paternally (pollen) and maternally (ovule). partial sequence of the rna-dependent rna polymerase gene was obtained from three overlapping cdna clones derived from pcv-1 dsrna. a search for aminoacid sequence similarity using the ncbi blast resulted in significant alignments with the rna dependent rna polymerase of beet cryptic virus -3 and several putative members of the family partitiviridae. data presented indicate that pcv-1 is a distinct species of the family partitiviridae.