Betanucleorhabdoviruses infecting elderberry

The genus Betanucleorhabdovirus includes plant viruses with negative sense, non-segmented, single-stranded RNA genome. They infect dicots, mainly herbaceous but also woody plants however each of them has a rather restricted host range. In our work, we characterize the novel betanucleorhabdoviruses infecting a medically important plant, elderberry. The total RNA was purified from the leaves, ribodepleted and sequenced using Illumina platform. The detailed analysis of similarity and the phylogenetic analysis of obtained thirteen isolates showing typical rhabdovirus genome structure allowed discrimination of these elderberry betanucleorhabdoviruses into the five groups, of each meets the ICTV demarcation criterion in the genus. The detected viruses represents the five novel, closely related, betanucleorhabdoviruses, tentative named sambucus betanucleorhabdovirus 1 to 5.