Barley mild mosaic virus is a member of theBymoviruses, a genus of the familyPotyviridae. The virus consists of two types of flexuous rod-shaped particles. Each of them contains one single-stranded polyadenylated RNA in plus orientation of approximately 7.6 kb (RNA1) and 3.6 kb (RNA2). Complementary DNAs of both RNAs have been synthesised and cloned. The nucleotide sequence of RNA2 has been determined. It is 3524 nucleotides in length, excluding the 3 poly(A) tail, and contains one large open reading frame (2679 nts), coding for a polyprotein of approximately 98 kDa. There are indications that a putative proteolytic activity in the N-terminal part can cleave the polyprotein autocatalytically into a 25 kDa protein (putative proteinase) and a 73 kDa polypeptide of unknown function.