The Preliminary Exploration Of Virus-induced Gene Silencing Via Root Absorption

In this study tobacco rattle virus (TRV) and tobacco plants were used to construct the gene -silencing vector carrying the fragment of PDS gene. The silencing of the target gene PDS resulted in photo - bleached young leaves of tobacco plants. RT - PCR analysis was employed to test the effect of PDS gene silencing, which showed that PDS gene was degraded significantly. This gene-silencing system would benefit the high-throughput analysis of plant genes in the future.The root-absorption system by Agrobacterium suspension carrying the TRV-derived VIGS vectors was time effective, and also was of some special advantages, including simple, convenient and efficient work process, ease to scale-up and higher level of expression than leaf infiltration. A particular important aspect of root-absorption system is that it could be used in very young seedling for VIGS.In order to expend the application of VIGS widely and effectively in plants for analysis of gene function in large-scale, and to learn whether VIGS could be used in the analyses of developmental gene function, the root absorption system used in VIGS was optimized: the effects of Agrobacterium concentration, leaf age of plant seedlings. The results showed: the Agrobacterium concentration had no obvious effects on VIGS efficiency, six-leaf old seedling was superior. When being more than six-week old the plants infected were not able to be induced VIGS,...