利用小RNA深度测序鉴定锦紫苏类病毒

Viroids are the infectious pathogens of plants that affect the physiological and biochemical process and normal development of certain hosts thereby causing diseases. Application of high-throughput sequencing of small RNAs isolated from infected plants and bioinformatic analysis using PFOR algorithm first developed and applied by our laboratory discovered and identified known and unknown viroids. In this study, the main objective is to discover viroid in an ornamental plant named Coleus blumei combining small RNA sequencing and bioinformatic analysis. Assembly by PFOR and BLASTN at nucletide level led to the discovery of two known viroids named Coleus blumei viroid 1 and Coleus blumei viroid 5. Another circular RNA sharing no sequence similarity to any of the known viroids was hypothesized as a new viroid based on its circular nature and the composition of nucleic acid.