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A potyvirus causing distortion and mosaic symptoms in the herbal plant Sanqi ( Panax notoginseng) was isolated from Yunnan province, China, and the complete nucleotide sequence of one isolate and the partial sequences of two other isolates were determined. The viral RNA genome comprised 9,750 nt excluding the 3′-terminal poly(A) tail, with the capacity to encode a single polyprotein of 3,089 amino acids. Phylogenetic analysis with other completely sequenced potyviruses revealed that the virus in this study was most closely related to plum pox virus, with 56.3% nt identity in the genomic RNA sequence and 53.3% aa identity in the polyprotein. However, the most closely related 3′-terminal sequences were from four partially sequenced potyviruses infecting plants of the family Apiaceae (67.7–75.3% nt identity and 73.8–76.7% aa identity in their coat protein cistrons), especially Angelica virus Y. These results suggest that this virus isolate should be designated a member of a new species in the genus Potyvirus, which is tentatively named Panax virus Y (PanVY). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]