Full-Length cDNA Cloning and Nucleotide Sequence Analysis of Cucumber Mosaic Virus (Strain Kor) RNA2

Full-length cDNA for RNA2 of cucumber mosaic virus strian Kor (Kor-CMV) was cloned downstream of synthetic T7 promoter by reverse transcriptase-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR). The clone could generate a full-length transcript corresponding to RNA1 in size when synthesized by T7 RNA polymerase. The complete nucleotide sequence has shown that the RNA2 is composed of 3,049 nucleotides and contains one functional open reading frame (ORF) of 2,574 nucleotides encoding 2a protein. The deduced translation product of the 2,574 nucleotides contains GDD motif which is a characteristic of RNA-dependent RNA polymerase (RdRp). The amino acid sequence analysis of the 2a protein has shown that the homology is found in decreasing order with O-CMV (98.8%), Y-CMV (98.7%), Fny-CMV (98.3%), KCMV (94.9%), Ix-CMV (91.9%), and Q-CMV (74.9%). Kor-CMV is suggested to belong to subgroup Ⅰ in the aspect of nucleotide sequence homology of RNA2.