ARS | Publication request: Evaluating the Ability of the Barley Stripe Mosaic Virus-Induced Gene Silencing System to Simultaneously Silence Two Wheat Genes

Submitted to: Cereal Research Communications
Publication Type: Peer Reviewed Journal
Publication Acceptance Date: September 5, 2008
Publication Date: October 15, 2008
Citation: Scofield, S.R., Cakir, C. 2008. Evaluating the Ability of the Barley Stripe Mosaic Virus-Induced Gene Silencing System to Simultaneously Silence Two Wheat Genes. Cereal Research Communications. 36:217-222.

Interpretive Summary: Virus-induced gene silencing is a powerful tool for determining gene function in wheat. A capability that would extend the utility of VIGS would be to silence two genes simultaneously using a single VIGS construct. This manuscript describes experiments that demonstrate that a single VIGS construct can efficiently silence two wheat genes simultaneously. This finding will be useful to researchers using VIGS to determine the function of cereal genes.

Technical Abstract: Virus-induced gene silencing (VIGS) is an important tool for rapid assessment of gene function in plants. The ability of the Barley stripe mosaic virus (BSMV) VIGS system to simultaneously silence two genes was assessed by comparing the extent of down-regulation of the wheat PDS and SGT1 genes after wheat plants were infected with BSMV-VIGS constructs carrying 178bp fragments of the PDS and SGT1 genes linked in cis or after infection with single gene silencing BSMV constructs carrying PDS or SGT1 alone or with a mixture of the single gene constructs. Although significant variation occurred in these studies it was clearly demonstrated that a two wheat genes can be silenced simultaneously by a single BSMV-VIGS construct.