Virus-induced Gene Silencing in Tobacco

Virus-introduced gene silencing is a technique that exploits the RNA-mediated antiviral mechanism. The modified virus vector carrying the fragment of a target gene were constructed and then inserted to silence the target gene within host plants by Agrobacterium-meditated transformation. The study chose tobacco rattle virus (TRV) and tobacco plants to construct the gene-silencing vector carrying the fragment of LePDS gene and the infection of the vector indicated that the silencing of the target gene PDS resulted in photo-bleached young tobacco plants. RT-PCR analysis was employed to test the effect of silencing the target gene PDS, which show that the gene PDS was significantly degraded. This gene-silencing system will benefit the high-flux analysis of plant genes in the future.