The ability of <Emphasis Type="Italic">Papaya ringspot virus</Emphasis>strains overcoming the transgenic resistance of papaya conferred by the coat protein gene is not correlated with higher degrees of sequence divergence from the transgene

The coat protein (CP) gene mediated transgenic resistance is found to be the best approach for protecting papaya plants against the destructive disease caused by Papaya ringspot viruses(PRSV). In order to study the variability of PRSV and the potential threat to the CP-transgenic resistance, five virus isolates were collected from transgenic plants of papaya line 16-0-1, which carry the CP gene of the typical mosaic strain of Taiwan PRSV YK, in an approved test field and fourteen from untransformed papaya plants in different areas of Taiwan. The results of biological, serological, and molecular characterization indicated that all isolates are related to PRSV YK. Among them, the isolate 5--19 from the transgenic line and the isolates CS and TD2 from untransformed papaya were able to overcome the YK CP gene-mediated resistance of papaya lines 18--2--4, 17-0-5, and 16-0-1, which provide high degrees of resistance to different geographic PRSV strains of Hawaii (HA), Mexico (MX), and Thailand (TH). These three isolates were also able to cause symptoms on untransformed papaya plants more severe than those induced by YK. In addition to the host reactions, the variability of the collected 19 isolates was also analyzed and compared with YK and other geographic strains by heteroduplex mobility assay (HMA) and sequence analyses. The results of HMA indicated that the CP genes of isolates 5--19 and TD2 are more divergent than those of other isolates when compared with YK. However, sequence analyses of the transgenic-resistance overcoming isolates 5-19, CS, and TD2 revealed that their CP coding regions and the 3 untranslated regions (UTRs) share nucleotide identities of 93.9–96.6% and 94.2–97.9% with those of YK, respectively; whereas the other geographic strains of HA, MX, and TH that could not overcome the transgenic resistance share lower nucleotide identities of 89.8–92.6% and 92.3–95.3% with those of YK, respectively. Our results indicate that the ability for overcoming the transgenic resistance is not solely correlated with higher degrees of sequence divergence from the transgene. The possible mechanism for overcoming the transgenic resistance and the potential threat of these PRSV strains to the application of the transgenic papaya lines carrying PRSV YK CP gene are discussed.