Q.)What is Mosaic virus?
A.)Mosaic virus is caused by a variety of viruses which attack all members of the curcurbit family, but especially thrive on summer squash, cucumber and muskmelon plants. It is spread by a variety of methods and so is a serious disease for plants of the curcurbit family, including cucumbers, gourds, muskmelons, winter squash, summer squash, watermelons and pumpkins.
Q.)Why can't the mosaic virus infect human cells?
A.)These viruses can only get into specific kinds of cell because the host cell needs to have a specific protein receptor in the membrane. Without it the virus can't attach to the cell and get in.
Q.)How would I get to know that my tomato plants have been infected by the virus?
A.)In tomatoes, the foliage shows mosaic (mottled) areas with alternating yellowish and dark green areas . Leaves are sometimes fern-like in appearance and sharply pointed. Infections of young plants reduce fruit set and occasionally cause blemishes and distortions of the fruit . The dark green areas of the mottle often appear thicker and somewhat elevated giving the leaves a blister-like appearance. Symptoms on other plant hosts include various degrees of chlorosis, curling, mottling mosaic, dwarfing, distortion, and blistering of the leaves. Many times the entire plant is dwarfed and flowers are discolored. Symptoms can be influenced by temperature, light conditions, nutritional factors, and water stress.
Q.)Is there any cure for the infected plants?
A.)The is no cure for the infection caused by the virus.The only measure that can be taken is total eradication of the infected plants.Q.)What do you mean by ORF details and Frames ?
A.)An Open Reading Frame (ORF) is a portion of an organism's genome which contains a sequence of bases that could potentially encode a protein. The start-points and end-points of a given ORF are not equivalent to the ends of the mRNA, but they are usually contained within the mRNA sequence. In a gene, ORFs are located between the start-code sequence (initiation codon) and the stop-code sequence (termination codon).Q.)What can you do about the infection?
Unfortunately, there is no chemical control for mosaic virus, and plants need to be removed and destroyed promptly if they are infected with this viral disease. To control the spread of the disease by cucumber beetles and aphids, you will need to control these insect populations with a diazinon containing insecticide repeating the application as much as necessary in seven day intervals. Although there are mosaic virus resistant cucumber varieties, so far no resistant varieties of muskmelon and summer squash are available to plant.