title: SVISS - a novel transient gene silencing system for gene function discovery and validation in tobacco plants.
abstract: We developed a novel, two-component transient gene silencing system in which the satellite tobacco mosaic virus (STMV) is used as vector for the delivery of inhibitory RNA into tobacco plants and the tobacco mosaic virus strain U2 (TMV-U2) is used as helper virus for supplying replication and movement proteins in trans. The main advantage of the system is that by uncoupling virus replication components from silencing induction components, the intensity of silencing becomes more pronounced. We call this system satellite virus-induced silencing system (SVISS) and will demonstrate here its robustness, speed and effectiveness. We were able to obtain pronounced and severe knockout phenotypes for a range of targeted endogenous genes belonging to various biochemical pathways and expressed in different plant tissues, such as genes involved in leaf and flower pigmentation, genes for cell wall synthesis in leaf, stem and root tissues or a ubiquitous RNA polymerase gene. By tandem insertion of more than one target gene sequence into the vector, we were able to induce simultaneous knockouts of an endogenous gene and a transgene. SVISS is the first transient gene silencing system for Nicotiana tabacum, which is a genetically well-characterized bridging species for the Solanaceae plant family.
authors.affiliation: Bayer BioScience NV, Jozef Plateaustraat 22, 9000 Gent, Belgium.
authors.forename: Véronique
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Gosselé
authors.forename: Ina
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Faché
authors.forename: Frank
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Meulewaeter
authors.forename: Marc
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Cornelissen
authors.forename: Michael
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Metzlaff
mesh_terms: D018506:Gene Expression Regulation, Plant; D020868:Gene Silencing; D017343:Genes, Plant / Q000235:genetics* / Q000502:physiology*; D005822:Genetic Vectors / Q000235:genetics; D008969:Molecular Sequence Data; D010641:Phenotype; D018515:Plant Leaves / Q000235:genetics; D018749:RNA, Plant / Q000235:genetics / Q000378:metabolism; D014026:Nicotiana / Q000235:genetics*; D019400:Tobacco mosaic satellite virus / Q000235:genetics
chemical_list: D018749:RNA, Plant