Developing viral-based gene editing tools to probe antiviral RNA silencing in plants

Plant virus diseases cause substantial losses in the U.S. and globally. Understanding principles that govern resistance or susceptibility of plants to virus infection is key for developing environmentally safe and sustainable control strategies, and to effectively utilize viruses as gene vectors in biotechnology. Our TBSV-N. benthamianacombination provides a useful experimental system for research on virus-host interactions and has continually served as a guide for our studies on virus infection of several hosts. The immediate goal of this integrated study is to better understand the antiviral silencing process in plants. The approaches address a new fundamental niche of study that has high potential to yield novel mechanistic interpretations of immediate relevance for understanding virus silencing in plants. Moreover, considering the evolutionary conservation of RNA silencing, a better comprehension of the antiviral silencing process in plants is not only of interest to those studying plant-microbe interactions but will very likely have an impact in various areas in life sciences.

Developing viral-based gene editing tools to probe antiviral RNA silencing in plants Grant