title: Engineering geminivirus resistance in Jatropha curcus.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Jatropha curcus is a good candidate plant for biodiesel production in tropical and subtropical regions. However, J. curcus is susceptible to the geminivirus Indian cassava mosaic virus (ICMV), and frequent viral disease outbreaks severely limit productivity. Therefore the development of J. curcus to carry on durable virus resistance remains crucial and poses a major biotechnological challenge.
  
  
  RESULTS
  We generated transgenic J. curcus plants expressing a hairpin, double-stranded (ds) RNA with sequences homologous to five key genes of ICMV-Dha strain DNA-A, which silences sequence-related viral genes thereby conferring ICMV resistance. Two rounds of virus inoculation were conducted via vacuum infiltration of ICMV-Dha. The durability and heritability of resistance conferred by the dsRNA was further tested to ascertain that T1 progeny transgenic plants were resistant to the ICMV-SG strain, which shared 94.5% nucleotides identity with the ICMV-Dha strain. Quantitative PCR analysis showed that resistant transgenic lines had no detectable virus.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  In this study we developed transgenic J. curcus plants to include a resistance to prevailing geminiviruses in Asia. These virus-resistant transgenic J. curcus plants can be used in various Jatropha breeding programs.
authors.affiliation: Temasek Life Sciences Laboratory, NO.1 Research Link, National University of Singapore, Singapore, 117604 Singapore ; State Key Laboratory of Plant Genomics, Institute of Microbiology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, NO.1 Beichen West Road, Beijing, 100101 China.
authors.forename: Jian
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Ye
authors.affiliation: Temasek Life Sciences Laboratory, NO.1 Research Link, National University of Singapore, Singapore, 117604 Singapore.
authors.forename: Jing
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Qu
authors.affiliation: Temasek Life Sciences Laboratory, NO.1 Research Link, National University of Singapore, Singapore, 117604 Singapore.
authors.forename: Hui-Zhu
authors.initials: HZ
authors.lastname: Mao
authors.affiliation: Temasek Life Sciences Laboratory, NO.1 Research Link, National University of Singapore, Singapore, 117604 Singapore.
authors.forename: Zhi-Gang
authors.initials: ZG
authors.lastname: Ma
authors.affiliation: Temasek Life Sciences Laboratory, NO.1 Research Link, National University of Singapore, Singapore, 117604 Singapore.
authors.forename: Nur Estya Binte
authors.initials: NE
authors.lastname: Rahman
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory of Plant Genomics, Institute of Microbiology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, NO.1 Beichen West Road, Beijing, 100101 China.
authors.forename: Chao
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Bai
authors.affiliation: Temasek Life Sciences Laboratory, NO.1 Research Link, National University of Singapore, Singapore, 117604 Singapore.
authors.forename: Wen
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Chen
authors.affiliation: Temasek Life Sciences Laboratory, NO.1 Research Link, National University of Singapore, Singapore, 117604 Singapore.
authors.forename: Shu-Ye
authors.initials: SY
authors.lastname: Jiang
authors.affiliation: Temasek Life Sciences Laboratory, NO.1 Research Link, National University of Singapore, Singapore, 117604 Singapore.
authors.forename: Srinivasan
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Ramachandran
authors.affiliation: Laboratory of Plant Molecular Biology, Rockefeller University, 1230 York Avenue, New York, NY 10021 USA.
authors.forename: Nam-Hai
authors.initials: NH
authors.lastname: Chua
keywords: Biodiesel; Indian cassava mosaic virus; Jatropha curcus; Transgenic; Virus resistance