Rapid purification of Soybean mosaic virus from small quantities of tissue by immunoprecipitation

•We developed a rapid procedure for SMV virion purification.•This method requires only a small amount of tissues.•The virion preparation by this method is ready for TEM observation. A rapid, simple, and efficient method for purification of Soybean mosaic virus (SMV) was developed based on immunoprecipitation. Traditional centrifugation-based methods for purification of SMV and other potyviruses require long, complicated procedures and large quantities of infected tissue (100–500g). The immunoprecipitation procedure described in this study allows the purification of intact SMV virion particles in 4h from 0.5g of tissue. The reliability of this procedure was demonstrated by RT-PCR and transmission electron microscopy (TEM). This method will be useful for high-throughput examination of the physical and morphological properties of virus particles because intact virion preparations ready for TEM observation can be purified rapidly from very small tissue samples.