Creating transgenic plants resistant to viral disease by RNAi

A group of scientists from the Institute of Biotechnology (Vietnam Academy of Science and Technology) has successfully applied genetic engineering of RNAi in the study of creating transgenic plants resistant to viral diseases.

RNAi is a post-transcriptional inactivation mechanism to counter the penetration of foreign acid nucleotides (derived from viruses), as well as control the expression of intracellular genes.

To create transgenic tobacco plants that carry RNAi structures, the transgenic experiments carried out by the Topping method have improved, with the use of 30 pieces of transformed tobacco leaves corresponding to each structure of CMV and TMV. After the culture and selective stages, 48 ​​surviving plant lines were collected to assess resistance to two types of TMV and CMV viruses.

The process of forming a blue rose with the help of RNAi technology.(Artwork / Csiro.au)

The authors used this mechanism to get tobacco plants as a research model, to create transgenic plants resistant to disease caused by two types of mosaic virus CMV and TMV.

The transgenic plants of T0 generation after planting outside the house are about 10-30cm high, 10cm long leaves are infected with artificial viruses 3 times. Results showed that there were 31/48 lines of fully resistant CMV plants; 42/48 lines of fully resistant TMV plants.

The most important goal of the study was to evaluate the resistance of two different viruses produced on transgenic tobacco lines with double RNAi structure. There are 24/34 lines of plants showing complete resistance to both CMV and TMV viruses. The lines of infection are very stunted, the leaves are slightly bulbous, the tips are pointed, and the skin is covered with frog skin.

Dr. Chu Hoang Ha said that the success in this study was to create tobacco lines with multi-segment gene structure capable of simultaneously fighting both TMV and CMV viruses.

Judging by artificial infection, a large number of transgenic tobacco lines carrying single or double structures are completely resistant to each virus, or both viruses at the same time correspond to the structure. Genetic structure is transferred.

The results from the study on tobacco models can be applied to other crops that are severely affected by viral diseases.

In particular, with rice, in recent years in Vietnam has discovered at least 4 different viruses that cause epidemics in the country, threatening to seriously affect rice production. . The application of RNAi technology in rice breeding is resistant to many types of pathogenic viruses at the same time.