Most plant viruses rely on the production of subgenomic RNAs (sgRNAs) for the expression of their genes and survival in the plant. Although this is a widely adopted strategy among viruses, the mechanism(s) whereby sgRNA production occurs remains poorly defined. Turnip yellow mosaic tymovirus (TYMV) is a positivestranded RNA virus that produces an sgRNA for the expression of its coat protein. Here we report that the subgenomic promoter sequence of TYMV is located on a 494-nucleotide fragment, containing previously identified highly conserved sequence elements, which are shown here to be essential for promoter function. After duplication, the subgenomic promoter can be inserted into the coat protein open reading frame, giving rise to the in vivo production of a second sgRNA. It is suggested that this promoter can function when contained on a different molecule than viral genomic RNA. This interesting trait may be of general use for plant and plant virus research.The genomes of the vast majority of positive-stranded RNA viruses contain more than one gene. Synthesis of internal genes is achieved by one or several strategies, including the formation of subgenomic RNAs (sgRNAs), internal translation initiation, leaky scanning, frameshift, and readthrough. Of these, the production of sgRNAs is by far the most common strategy used by viruses. Indeed, among positive-stranded RNA viruses of plants, only viruses of the Potyviridae and Comoviridae families and the sequiviruses of the Sequiviridae family do not resort to this strategy (reviewed in reference 29).Synthesis of sgRNA by internal initiation of transcription on promoters located on the complementary minus-strand RNA of genomic length is well documented for plant viruses such as brome mosaic bromovirus (BMV) (18), turnip yellow mosaic tymovirus (TYMV) (10), alfalfa mosaic ilarvirus (A1MV) (26), cucumber mosaic cucumovirus (CMV) (4), beet necrotic yellow vein benyvirus (BNYVV) (2), and turnip crinkle carmovirus (TCV) (27,28). For certain viruses such as potato potexvirus X (15) and tomato bushy stunt tombusvirus (31), internal initiation has been shown to also depend on interaction between distantly located cis regions and the promoter region in the genome. On the other hand, in red clover necrotic mosaic dianthovirus (24), sgRNA synthesis appears to occur by premature termination during minus-strand synthesis, with subsequent sgRNA production from the truncated nascent RNA. An interesting feature of this termination process is that it depends on trans activation between the two RNA components that make up the viral genome.The promoters for the synthesis of several sgRNAs (sg promoters) have been examined. Defining such regions has relied on several methods including site-specific mutations, duplication of the hypothetical promoter region followed by deletion mutations, RNA sequence and/or structure predictions, phylogenetic sequence comparisons, and the use of chemical and enzymatic probes. Frequently, sg promoters are composed of more than one region: a core promo...