Evolutionary relationship of alfalfa mosaic virus with cucumber mosaic virus and brome mosaic virus

The amino acid sequences of the non-structural protein (molecular weight 35,000; 3a protein) from three plant viruses — cucumber mosaic, brome mosaic and alfalfa mosaic have been systematically compared using the partial genomic sequences for these three viruses already available. The 3a protein of cucumber mosaic virus has an amino acid sequence homology of 33.7% with the corresponding protein of brome mosaic virus. A similar protein from alfalfa mosaic virus has a homology of 18.2% and 14.2% with the protein from brome mosaic virus and cucumber mosaic virus, respectively. These results suggest that the three plant viruses are evolutionarily related, although, the evolutionary distance between alfalfa mosaic virus and cucumber mosaic virus or brome mosaic virus is much larger than the corresponding distance between the latter two viruses.