The templates for in vitro transcription of these two clones were generated through LD-PCR (data not shown). The resulting amplified products (∼6.5 kb) consisted of a T7 promoter fused with the chimeric CGMMV genome carrying EB4. Transcripts produced from the two constructs were separately tested for infectivity by inoculating the host plants. After repeated attempts, both the pRT-and pRG-generated transcripts did not cause infection of the inoculated plants (Table 1 ). There was no evidence of virus genomic material in the inoculated plant tissues tested (data not shown). It is speculated that the read-through sequence of TMV may not be suitable for the CGMMV chimeric clones, hence contributing to the absence of infectious virus transcripts. To overcome this possibility, another chimeric clone (pCG+FSRTRE) was constructed using the read-through sequence AAA-UAG-CAA-UUA of the wild-type CGMMV itself ( Figure 1 ). The template for in vitro transcription, based on the pCG+FSRTRE clone, was generated through LD-PCR. The in vitro transcription products ( Figure 2) were used in inoculation studies. The new leaves of plants (Table 1 and Figure 3 ). Infection could be detected through RT-PCR when total RNA of new noninoculated leaf was used as template. Detection of the virus by RT-PCR ( Figure 4 ) suggests that the viruses had moved from the inoculated leaf to new leaves. This implies that the chimeric virus pCG+FSRTRE carrying the read-through sequence from the CGMMV genome (AAA-UAG-CAA-UUA) was infectious and that the virus particles were able to assemble. The plants, however, continued to grow without any further noticeable symptoms. Virus particles were extracted from the infected plants and an aliquot was electrophoretically separated on 15% SDS-PAGE ( Figure 5 ) resulting in two distinct suggesting that the virus population consisted of two species of coat proteins, the EB4-CP fusion (larger in size) and the wild-type CGMMV CP (smaller in size). The ratio of modified to unmodified CP was approximately 1:1.