In Ed Rybicki's posting musing about picorna-like virus evolution,
he claimed that plant picorna-like viruses are not similar in sequence to
anything else.
This is incorrect. Turnbull-Ross et al. show by dot plot analysis (Fig. 3, J
Gen Virol 73:3203 1992) a clear similarity of the sequence of the polyprotein
of parsnip yellow fleck virus to the sequences of human rhinovirus 14 and
hepatitis A virus polyproteins. The polyprotein sequence of rice tungro
spherical virus is also related to those of the animal picornaviruses.
BTW, I'm glad to see the increase in traffic. I've been looking at the almost
empty board for some time. My interests lie in virus evolution and
pathogenesis in general. Specifically, current interests include caulimo- and
tobamoviruses and movement proteins and synergy.
