The 5' untranslated region of Bean pod mottle virus RNA2 tolerates unusually large deletions or insertions.

Bean pod mottle virus (BPMV) is a bipartite, positive-sense (+) RNA virus of Secoviridae. We recently reported that a 137 nucleotide (nt) stretch (#263-399) of the 466 nt 5' untranslated region (5' UTR) of BPMV RNA2 can be deleted without compromising BPMV propagation in host plants [Lin et al., J.