Figure 5: Neighbour-Joining dendrogram of sequence relationships among Geminiviridae. The whole-sequence and component A alignments and dendrogram were produced using DNAMAN (Lynnon BioSoft, Quebec, Canada) ver. 3.0 for Windows 95, which uses a CLUSTAL-type algorithm. Horizontal distances are proportional to sequence distances; vertical distances are arbitrary. The dendrogram was bootstrapped 1000 times (percent scores shown at nodes), and rooted on an arbitrary sequence. Generic divisions are shown alongside - "New World" and "Old World" refer to geographic origins of species of begomoviruses.

 SIMILARITY WITH OTHER TAXA 

The Rep protein is supposed to act similarly to that of the multicomponent ssDNA circular nanoviruses (eg: Banana bunchy top virus); the latter also have a very similar nonanucleotide sequence conserved among all genome segments, and replicate via rolling circles. It is speculated that geminiviruses derive from prokaryotic episomal replicons.

DERIVATION OF NAMES 

Gemini: from latin meaning twins, describing the characteristic twinned (=geminate) particle morphology