A new, recombinant virus infecting Sida in Jamaica

What is it about?

In this paper we describe a virus we found infecting Sida in Jamaica that had not been published before. The virus we identified was a begomovirus whose genome exists in two parts: a DNA-A & DNA-B. The DNA-B was recombinant, meaning that it had sections of DNA that had come from other viruses. We also demonstrate that our clone of this virus is biologically active since we were able to infect a plant in the tobacco family with it.

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Why is it important?

The discovery of this recombinant virus is one more step towards understanding the role that begomoviruses have on Jamaican crops. This particular virus didn't affect any of the crops we tested in our experiments. However, since Sida is able to host recombinant viruses, it's important that farmers eradicate infected Sida from their farms just in case.