In vitro messenger properties of a satellite RNA of cucumber mosaic virus.

The nucleotide sequence of a naturally occurring satellite RNA (satRNA) of cucumber mosaic virus strain F (CMV-F) isolated from Petasites japonicum Miq. has been determined. F-satRNA is 338 nucleotides long and possesses a single open reading frame (ORF; residues 11 to 91) in its 5-terminal region. Analysis of in vitro translation products of the RNA revealed that the major peptide synthesized had an Mr of 2800, corresponding to the value (Mr 2874) calculated from the amino acid sequence predicted from the ORF. Furthermore, a ribosome-binding fragment of the RNA in the initiation step of an in vitro translation system was found to contain the first AUG codon (residues 11 to 13). These results suggest that of the F-satRNA sequence, the coding region for the peptide can be assigned to the region from AUG to GGU (residues 11 to 91), accompanied by a termination codon UGA.