Identification of Tobacco Leaf Curl Virus Infecting Lonicera Japonica, An Ornamental Plant Common in Japan

A begomovirus, tentatively named tobacco leaf curl japan virus-jpu (tblcjv-jpu), was isolated from lonicera japonica (honeysuckle) plants grown in utsunomiya showing veinal chlorosis symptoms. the tblcjv-jpu genome with 2,761 nt showed a highest identity with tblcjv-jp3 and was also close to tblcjv and as well to tblcjv-jp2. the overall nt identity with tblcjv-jp3 amounted to 92.94%, while the identities in encoded amino acid (aa) sequence of coat protein (cp) and putative products of ac1 and av2 orfs were as high as 98.05, 92.54 and 93.96%, respectively. low sequence identities were observed in the intergenic region (ir) of tblcjv-jpu as compared with tblcjv, ageratum yellow vein taiwan virus-kochi isolate and honeysuckle yellow vein virus- kagoshima isolates. recombinations were detected in the 5´end (2650 to 2761) and extreme 3´ portion of the genome (220 to 350). both regions demonstrated high identities with ayvtv-kochi and hsyvv-kagoshima. to the best of our knowledge this is the first report of isolation of tblcjv from l. japonica.