Review Article: The Silence of Genes in Transgenic Plants

In genetically modified plants, the introduced transgenes are sometimes not expressed. They can be silenced. Transgenes can also cause the silencing of endogenous plant genes if they are sufficiently homologous, a phenomenon known as co-suppression. Silencing occurs transcriptionally and post-transcriptionally but silencing of endogenous genes seems predominantly post-transcriptional. If viral transgenes are introduced and silenced, the post-transcriptional process also prevents homologous RNA viruses from accumulating; this is a means of generating virus-resistant plants. A major goal of current research is to dissect the mechanism(s) of these sequence-homology-dependent gene silencing phenomena. Various factors seem to play a role, including DNA methylation, transgene copy number and the repetitiveness of the transgene insert, transgene expression level, possible production of aberrant RNAs, and ectopic DNA–DNA interactions. The causal relationship between these factors and the link between transcriptional and post-transcriptional silencing is not always clear. In this review we discuss various observations associated with gene silencing and attempt to relate them.