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Journal of Virology, May 2000, p. 4738-4745, Vol. 74, No. 10
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

Murad Ghanim and Henryk Czosnek*

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.


* 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


Journal of Virology, May 2000, p. 4738-4745, Vol. 74, No. 10
0022-538X/00/$04.00+0
Copyright © 2000, American Society for Microbiology. All rights reserved.