Applications of Plant Virus Induced Gene Silencing for Gene Function Studies

Virus-induced gene silencing(VIGS)is a recently developed gene transcript suppression technique for characterizing the function of plant genes.Up to now,various VIGS vectors based on RNA virus,DNA virus,satellite virus and DNA satellite have been established,these VIGS vector could suppress gene expression effectively in many important plants including N.benthamiana,potato and tomato.The mechanisms of VIGS and how it can be used as a fast and high-throughput reverse genetics tool in analysis of the gene function are described.The future prospects of VIGS vectors for assessing and characterizing the function of plant genes are discussed.