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Journal of Virology, May 2000, p. 4738-4745, Vol. 74, No. 10
Department of Field Crops and Genetics and
Otto Warburg Centre for Biotechnology in Agriculture, Faculty of
Agriculture, Food and Environmental Quality Sciences, The Hebrew
University of Jerusalem, Rehovot 76100, Israel
Received 19 August 1999/Accepted 10 February 2000
Tomato yellow leaf curl virus (TYLCV) is the name given to a
complex of geminiviruses infecting tomato cultures worldwide. TYLCV is
transmitted by a single insect species, the whitefly Bemisia
tabaci. Herein we show that a TYLCV isolate from Israel (TYLCV-Is) can be transmitted among whiteflies in a sex-dependent manner, in the absence of any other source of virus. TYLCV was transmitted from viruliferous males to females and from viruliferous females to males but not among insects of the same sex. Transmission took place when insects were caged in groups or in couples, in a
feeding chamber or on cotton plants, a TYLCV nonhost. The recipient insects were able to efficiently inoculate tomato test plants. Insect-to-insect virus transmission was instrumental in increasing the
number of whiteflies capable of infecting tomato test plants in a
whitefly population. TYLCV was present in the hemolymph of whiteflies
caged with viruliferous insects of the other sex; therefore, the virus
follows, at least in part, the circulative pathway associated with
acquisition from infected plants. Taken as a whole, these results
imply that a plant virus can be sexually transmitted from insect to insect.
0022-538X/00/$04.00+0
Copyright © 2000, American Society for Microbiology. All rights reserved.
Tomato Yellow Leaf Curl Geminivirus (TYLCV-Is) Is Transmitted
among Whiteflies (Bemisia tabaci) in a Sex-Related
Manner
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Corresponding author. Mailing address: Department of
Field Crops and Genetics, Faculty of Agriculture, Food and
Environmental Quality Sciences, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem,
Rehovot 76100, Israel. Phone: 972 8 9481249. Fax: 972 8 9468265. E-mail: czosnek{at}agri.huji.ac.il
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