Rapid purification of Soybean mosaic virus from small quantities of tissue by immunoprecipitation

A rapid, simple, and efficient method for purification of Soybean mosaic virus (SMV) was developed based on immunoprecipitation. Traditional centrifugation-based methods for purification of SMV and other potyviruses require long, complicated procedures and large quantities of infected tissue (100-500 g). The immunoprecipitation procedure described in this study allows the purification of intact SMV virion particles in 4h from 0.5 g of tissue. The reliability of this procedure was demonstrated by RT-PCR and transmission electron microscopy (TEM). This method will be useful for high-throughput examination of the physical and morphological properties of virus particles because intact virion preparations ready for TEM observation can be purified rapidly from very small tissue samples.