Medlar (Mespilus germanica), a novel natural host for Hop stunt viroid (HSVd)

Hop stunt viroid (HSVd) infects various plants such as citrus, hop, almond, grapevine, pear, plum, peach, mulberry, fig, and pistachio. Medlar trees in an orchard in Malatya province of Türkiye were surveyed for the presence of HSVd in 2021. Twenty leaf and flower samples were collected and tested by RT-PCR methods using pathogen-specific primers. HSVd was found in five of the twenty medlar samples showing novel sequence variations. Two of the five HSVd variations were chosen at random and registered in GenBank. Both Turkish HSVd isolates had genomes that were 300 nucleotides long. The complete genome sequence of these variations was compared to isolates in GenBank. The nucleotide sequences of HSVd isolates exhibited 89.7-100% similarity with HSVd isolates found in various crops worldwide. Analysing the alignment of multiple sequences and conducting phylogenetic analyses revealed that identified HSVd variants clustered with citrus Türkiye (MZ995256), citrus Italy (KC584022), citrus Iran (GQ260203) and citrus Japan (X06719) isolates with 100% similarity rate and citrus China (FJ716172) and citrus Spain (AF213503) isolates with 99.5% and 98.0% similarity rates, respectively. To our knowledge, this is the first report of medlar serving as a natural host for HSVd. HSVd infection in medlar could be a problem in the future, and additional study is needed. The infection appears to be latent, but it might be a source of infection for susceptible plants

Usage of plant pathogenic viruses in nanotechnology

Bitki virüsleri nanobiyoteknolojide konukçularında çok miktarda antijenik materyal üretmeleri nedeni ile sıklıkla kullanılmaktadır. Bitki virüslerinin şablon olarak kullanıldığı biyomateryaller, biyonanobilim araştırmalarının bir alt alanında, nanoölçek düzeyinde cihazların üretiminde ya da yöntemlerin hazırlanmasında kullanılmaktadır. Bitki patojeni virüslerden, ayrıca, viral nanopartikül olarak tıpta yararlanılmakta, biyokatalizör olarak kullanılmakta, tarımda bitki patojenlerinin kontrolünde de yararlanılmaktadır. Bu makalede bitki virüslerinden nanobiyoteknolojide yararlanma olanakları derlenmiştir.Plant viruses are increasingly being developed for applications in nanobiotechnology because of their potential for producing large quantities of antigenic material in plant hosts. The obtained biomaterials from plant viruses are used in the production of nanoscale devices or in the preparation of methods in a sub-area of bionanosim. Plant pathogenic viruses are used as templates for the production of new materials in nanotechnology. Plant pathogenic viruses also utilize as viral nanoparticle in medicine, are used as biocatalysts, and are also used in the control of plant pathogens in agriculture. In this review the opportunity of use of plant virus particles in nanobiotechnology is highlighted

Prevalence and Molecular Characterization of Deformed Wing, Acute Bee Paralysis and Black Queen Cell Viruses Infecting Honey Bees and Varroa Mites

Surveys were conducted in Malatya and Elazığ provinces of Eastern Türkiye between 2018–2019 to detect the presence and distribution of Deformed wing virus (DWV), Acute bee paralysis virus (ABPV) and Black queen cell virus (BQCV) infecting honey bees and Varroa mites. Thirty Varroa mites feeding on honey bees and 147 honey bees were collected from twenty-five apiaries of Malatya and fifteen apiaries of Elazığ. The collected samples were subjected to reverse transcriptase-polymerase chain reaction. All tested viruses were found to be present in the samples singly or as mixed infections. The prevalence of the viruses were 23.81%, 12.93%, and 10.20% for DWV, ABPV and BQCV, respectively. Five out of thirty Varroa mites tested for the viruses were found to be infected only with DWV. Randomly chosen sequences of each detected virus’s partial polyprotein gene region were registered in GenBank under the accession numbers OP805878, OP805879, OP805880, OP805887, OP805888, OP805889, OP805890, OP805891 (DWV), OP805881, OP805882, OP805883, OP805884 (ABPV) and OP805885, OP805886 (BQCV). The phylogenetic tree of the viral isolates were compared with the world isolates. DWV isolates were found to be closely related to the UK, Lebanon, Türkiye, France, Germany and Israel isolates, whereas ABPV isolates were related to Türkiye, South Africa, Slovenia, Serbia, France, Hungary, Syria and USA isolates and BQCV isolates were related to China, South Korea, Czech Republic, France, Hungary, Poland, South Africa, Australia and Sweden isolates. The presence of DWV, ABPV and BQCV infections in Malatya and Elazığ provinces of Türkiye is revealed for the first time in this study