Incidence of endornaviruses in Phytophthora taxon douglasfir and Phytophthora ramorum

In this investigation, we show that four Phytophthora taxon douglasfir isolates from the USA, irrespective of their geographical location or host plant, and 20% of a representative cohort of Phytophthora ramorum isolates contain endornavirus dsRNAs. Three endornavirus-specific RT-PCR amplicons were generated by RT-PCR using dsRNA isolated from the four Phytophthora taxon douglasfir isolates and one representative Phytophthora ramorum isolate as template with oligonucleotide primers designed from the sequence of Phytophthora endornavirus 1. The amplified segments showed a very high degree of sequence similarity suggesting that the virus has gone through a population bottleneck during its emergence.