Characterization of viruses infecting potato plants from a single location in Shetland, an isolated scottish archipelago

Sequence data were obtained from 29 isolates of Potato virus A (PVA), Potato virus S (PVS), Potato virus V (PVV) and Potato virus X (PVX) infecting nine tubers from Shetland, one of the most remote inhabited islands in the United Kingdom. These isolates were sequenced in the coat protein region, as were 29 Scottish mainland isolates of the same four potato virus species, and these 58 isolates were compared to previously published sequence data. This has allowed the characterization of viruses from a relatively isolated location, where there is little production of ware potatoes and no seed potato production. Phylogenetic homogeneity of the Shetland isolates of PVS and PVV was apparent. PVX was more heterogeneous, and Shetland isolates cluster with the Scottish isolates in a group which includes Asian and European isolates. For PVA, the majority of the Shetland and Scottish mainland isolates formed a predominantly Scottish grouping, with the remaining Shetland and Scottish mainland isolates clustering with a previously characterized Scottish isolate. There were three main groups of PVA, of which the Scottish grouping was the only one which did not have a fully characterized representative. To extend the characterization of PVA, the nucleotide sequence of the full polyprotein region encoding all the gene products of an isolate from Shetland was determined.