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: Cakir, C., Scofield, S.R. 2008. Evaluating the ability of the barley stripe mosaic virus-induced gene silencing system to simultaneously silence two wheat genes. Cereal Research Communications. 36:21-222.

Interpretive Summary: This study describes simultaneously the silencing of two genes in Virus Induced Gene Silencing by using Barley Stripe Mosaic Virus system. Also, the variation obtained from results discusses and describes how the silencing works in wheat plants. Our results explained how the insert size, and insert instability in the BSMV-VIGS system had played an important role in silencing the wheat.

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 the wheat plants were infected with BSMV-VIGS contructs 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 two wheat genes can be silenced simultaneously by a single BSMV-VIGS construct.