Virus-Induced Gene Silencing in Sweet Basil (Ocimum basilicum)

Virus-induced gene silencing (VIGS) is a powerful reverse genetic tool for rapid functional analysis of plant genes. Over the last decade, VIGS has been widely used for conducting rapid gene knockdown experiment in plants and played a crucial role in advancing applied and basic research in plant science. VIGS was studied extensively in model plants Arabidopsis and tobacco. Moreover, several non-model plants such as Papaver (Hileman et al., Plant J 44:334–341, 2005), Aquilegia (Gould and Kramer, Plant Methods 3:6, 2007), Catharanthus (Liscombe and O'Connor, Phytochemistry 72:1969–1977, 2011), Withania (Singh et al., Plant Biol J 13:1287–1299, 2015), and Ocimum (Misra et al., New Phytol 214:706–720, 2017) were also successfully explored. We have recently developed a robust protocol for VIGS in sweet basil (Ocimum basilicum). Sweet basil, a popular medicinal/aromatic herb, is being studied for the diversity of specialized metabolites produced in it.