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Monoclonal Antibodies Detect a Single Amino Acid Difference Between the Coat Proteins of Soilborne Wheat Mosaic Virus Isolates: Implications for Virus Structure

First author: Zhejiang Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Hangzhou 310021, People's Republic of China; second, third, fourth, and sixth authors: Department of Virology, Scottish Crop Research Institute, Invergowrie, Dundee DD2 5DA, United Kingdom; and fifth author: Department of Molecular Biology, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN 37235

Four monoclonal antibodies (MAbs) were prepared against an isolate of soilborne wheat mosaic furovirus from Oklahoma (SBWMV Okl-7). Three MAbs had different reactivities in tests on SBWMV isolates from Nebraska (Lab1), France, and Japan. One MAb (SCR 133) also reacted with oat golden stripe furovirus. None of the MAbs cross-reacted with other rod-shaped viruses including beet necrotic yellow vein furovirus, potato mop-top furovirus, and tobacco rattle tobravirus. Sequence analysis of nucleotides between 334 and 1,000 of RNA 2, the region that encodes the coat protein (CP) and the first 44 amino acids of a readthrough protein, of the four SBWMV isolates revealed up to 27 base changes from the published sequence of a Nebraska field isolate of SBWMV. Most changes were translationally silent, but some caused differences of one to three amino acids in residues located near either the N- or C-terminus of the CPs of the different isolates. Two further single amino acid changes were found at the beginning of the readthrough domain of the CP-readthrough protein. Some of these amino acid changes could be discriminated by MAbs SCR 132, SCR 133, and SCR 134. Peptide scanning (Pepscan) analysis indicated that the epitope recognized by SCR 134 is located near the N-terminus of the CP. SCR 132 was deduced to react with a discontinuous CP epitope near the C-terminus, and SCR 133 reacted with a surface-located continuous epitope also near the C-terminus. Predictions of CP structure from computer-assisted three-dimensional model building, by comparison with the X-ray fiber diffraction structure of tobacco mosaic virus, suggested that the three CP amino acids found to differ between isolates of SBWMV were located near the viral surface and were in regions predicted to be antigenic.

Additional keywords: coat protein sequence, ELISA, epitope mapping.