Evidence Suggesting Nonassociation of Mycoplasma With Pea Disease

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Abstract
Sixty mycoplasma isolates, with uniform colony type, were derived from 5 of 31 experiments using diseased pea tissue extracts as inoculum. Five of these isolates were identified serologically as Mycoplasma gallisepticum. The DNA of isolate Y12-5P consisted of 34.8% guanine-cytosine base composition, was 92% homologous with that of M. gallisepticum reference isolate S6, and constituted a genome size of 4.3-4.6 .times. 108 daltons. Isolate Y12-5P was highly pathogenic to turkeys, but not to plants. Two isolates produced growth responses at 3 temperatures comparable to those of M. gallisepticum reference strain, S6. Mycoplasmalike structures visualized in diseased pea cytoplasm by ultrathin section EM were probably vesicles of host-cell membranes enclosing cytoplasm, ribosomes and DNA-like strands. These lines of evidence suggest that the etiology of the previously reported pea disease may have been viral, that M. gallisepticum isolates derived in these studies originated from animal rather than plant sources and that these isolates were introduced repeatably by an unknown means in attempts to cultivate microorganisms from diseased plant tissues.

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