Use of rolling circle amplification for the identification of unknown components of banana bunchy top virus from Pakistan

In the present study rolling circle amplification (rca) was used to characterize the unknown components of banana bunchy top virus (bbtv) from the samples collected from tando jam sindh,pakistan. the rca product was treated with several types of restriction endonuleases (clai,kpni,ecorv,bglii,mboi,trui,hpaii and haeiii) for restriction fragment length polymorphism (rflp) analysis. this restriction pattern was further confirmed by southern blot analysis and hybridized to all respective fragments. on the basis of results,it has been suggested that five components of bbtv are prevalent in pakistani isolate of bbtv. furthermore,it was found that the cloned components were highly homologous to south pacific group of bbtv reported earlier in pakistan. so,the results of present study confirmed that similar to geminiviruses,the rca technology can also be used for characterization of nanoviruses. it can also be suggested that the technique is of great value to nanovirus research since the components that make up this group are still being discovered.