There was no significant difference in the
colony morphology, growth rate, and sporulation ability between
the AbFV1-free and the original AbFV1-infected strains, except
some slight difference in pigment production. Meanwhile, virulence
tests showed that AbFV1-free and AbFV1-infected strains
could form lesions of similar size on detached leaves of Brassica
pekinensis. Therefore, these results suggest that AbFV1 has negligible
or no impact on the biological properties of the host fungus.
Because both the AbFV1-free and AbEV1-free strain has not yet
been obtained, we could not exclude the possibility that some interactions
between the two viruses may exist. Also, we could not
determine whether AbEV1 alone has an effect on its fungal host
or not, although previous studies showed that the endornaviruses
largely infected asymptomatically. Future studies (via construction
of infectious full-length cDNA for transformation or transcript
transfection) are required to precisely establish the causal-effectual
function of the AbFV1