FIG 6.

Accumulation of WMoV-specific RNAs in wheat. (A) Northern blot hybridization of total RNA from healthy (H) and WMoV-infected (I) wheat. The virus- and virus complementary-sense RNA-specific riboprobes were generated for portions of ORFs (459 to 971 nt) encoded by RNAs 1 to 8. Note that virus (v)-sense RNA strands accumulated in large amounts compared to virus complementary (vc)-sense RNA strands. RNAs 3, 4, 7, and 8 produced shorter-than-genomic vc-strand RNAs, which are most likely subgenomic-length mRNAs. Subgenomic-length mRNAs were not detected for RNAs 1, 2, 5, and 6, which most likely express through near-genomic-length mRNAs that are difficult to separate from the respective genomic-length vc-strand RNAs. Solid and open arrowheads indicate the positions of genomic-length virus- and vc-sense RNAs, respectively. Subgenomic-length mRNAs are indicated with asterisks. (B) The specificity and strength of DIG-labeled riboprobes were examined by hybridizing each probe with the positive- and negative-sense transcripts of the corresponding probe. Riboprobes for RNA 6 are presented as representative of the probes of all other genomic RNAs.