Identification of Three Viruses Infecting Mulberry Varieties

Viruses-mediated genome editing in plants is a powerful strategy to develop plant cultivars with important and novel agricultural traits. Mulberry alba is an important economic tree species that has been cultivated in China for more than 5000 years. So far, only a few viruses have been identified from mulberry trees, and their application potential is largely unknown. Therefore, mining more virus resources from the mulberry tree can pave the way for the establishment of useful engineering tools. In this study, eight old mulberry plants were gathered in seven geographic areas for virome analysis. Based on transcriptome analysis, we discovered three viruses associated with mulberries: Citrus leaf blotch virus isolate mulberry alba 2 (CLBV-ML2), Mulberry-associated virga-like virus (MaVLV), and Mulberry-associated narna-like virus (MaNLV). The genome of CLBV-ML2 was completely sequenced and exhibited high homology with Citriviruses, considered to be members of the genus , while the genomes of MaVLV and MaNLV were nearly completed lacking the 5' and 3' termini sequences. We tentatively consider MaVLV to be members of the family and MaNLV to be members of the genus based on the results of phylogenetic trees. The infection experiments showed that CLBV-ML2 could be detected in the inoculated seedlings of both and , while MaVLV could only be detected in . All of the infected seedlings did not show obvious symptoms.