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Molecular Plant Pathology

Use of the Polymerase Chain Reaction to Amplify Tomato Yellow Leaf Curl Virus DNA from Infected Plants and Viruliferous Whiteflies. Nir Navot, Department of Field and Vegetable Crops and the Otto Warburg Center for Biotechnology in Agriculture, Faculty of Agriculture, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, P.O. Box 12, Rehovot, 76100 Israel, Present address: Department of Cell Biology, The Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot, 76100 Israel; Muhammad Zeidan(2), Eran Pichersky(3), Dani Zamir(4), and Henryk Czosnek(5). (2)(4)(5)Department of Field and Vegetable Crops and the Otto Warburg Center for Biotechnology in Agriculture, Faculty of Agriculture, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, P.O. Box 12, Rehovot, 76100 Israel; (3)Biology Department, Natural Science Building, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor 48109. Phytopathology 82:1199-1202. Accepted for publication 14 May 1992. Copyright 1992 The American Phytopathological Society. DOI: 10.1094/Phyto-82-1199.

The genomic DNA molecule of an Israeli isolate of tomato yellow leaf curl virus (TYLCV), a whitefly-transmitted geminivirus, was amplified from total DNA extracts of TYLCV-infected plants (Lycopersicon esculentum ‘M82’) by the use of the polymerase chain reaction (PCR). Synthetic oligonucleotides complementary to different regions of the viral genome were used in different combinations to amplify the full-length as well as subgenomic fragments of the TYLCV DNA molecule. The procedure was also used to amplify TYLCV DNA from nucleic acid extracts of individual whiteflies (Bemisia tabaci) fed on TYLCV-infected tomato. TYLCV DNA was also amplified from whiteflies collected from naturally infected bean plants (Phaseolus vulgaris ‘Tender Green’) in the field.