GoldenBraid-compatible infectious clone of apple latent spherical virus (ALSV) and its use for virus-induced gene silencing

Abstract

Virus-induced gene silencing (VIGS) is a technological process in which the expression of a plant target gene is down-regulated by inoculating a plant with a recombinant virus-based vector carrying part of the coding sequence of the target gene (Baulcombe, 1999a; Burch-Smith et al., 2004). VIGS uses an RNA silencing-based defence mechanism in which double-stranded RNAs (dsRNAs) of viral origin, as templates, are processed into small interfering RNAs by Dicer-like enzymes. The resulting siRNA is incorporated into an RNA-induced silencing complex, which leads to the degradation of the RNA (viral RNA, mRNA) with sequences complementary to the siRNA. Thus, VIGS utilises foreign plant genes/targets harboured by a viral vector to produce dsRNA, a source of siRNAs that triggers RNA-mediated silencing of the corresponding target gene. VIGS has proven to be a powerful and cost-effective method for functional genomics studies in plants (Rössner et al., 2022).

Keywords

• agroinfiltration
• apple latent spherical virus
• goldenbraid system
• phytoene desaturase gene
• rt-qpcr
• virus-induced gene silencing