ARS | Publication request: mi-siRNAs and plum pox virus resistance

Submitted to: Meeting Abstract
Publication Type: Abstract Only
Publication Acceptance Date: August 19, 2011
Publication Date: N/A

Technical Abstract: The agricultural sector is expecting to derive tangible benefits from the investments that have been made in plant biotechnology. Although plant biotechnology research has been carried out for decades, only a few examples of biotech horticultural crops have reached the market. Plum pox virus (PPV) presents a case where science-based knowledge has been used to develop a successful technology that can be applied towards the solution of a major agricultural problem, specifically, blocking the spread of PPV. Over the last 18 years, the experience gained through the characterization of transgenic 'Honeysweet' PPV resistant plum represents substantial supporting evidence for the effectiveness of the silencing model, based on small interfering RNAs (siRNAs), in providing resistance to PPV infection. To follow up the successful characterization of siRNAs from 'HoneySweet' plum, we chose to focus our investigation on two classes of RNAi technologies (mi and siRNAs) utilizing the well studied capsid cistron. The bioinformatic approach we performed identified some potentially exploitable folded RNA segments. Downstream analyses in planta confirmed that siRNA technologies confer a stable resistance to PPV in plum. While the transient transcription studies with herbaceous plant models showed that either mi- and/or siRNAs can be detected, the efficiency of these RNAi technologies can only be verified in genetically engineered plants.