Virus-Induced Gene Silencing (VIGS): A Powerful Tool for Crop Improvement and Its Advancement towards Epigenetics

Virus-induced gene silencing (VIGS) is an RNA-mediated reverse genetics technology that has evolved into an indispensable approach for analyzing the function of genes. It downregulates endogenous genes by utilizing the posttranscriptional gene silencing (PTGS) machinery of plants to prevent systemic...

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Published in:International journal of molecular sciences 2023-03, Vol.24 (6), p.5608
Main Authors: Zulfiqar, Sumer, Farooq, Muhammad Awais, Zhao, Tiantian, Wang, PeiPei, Tabusam, Javaria, Wang, Yanhua, Xuan, Shuxin, Zhao, Jianjun, Chen, Xueping, Shen, Shuxing, Gu, Aixia
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Crop improvement
Deoxyribonucleic acid
DNA
DNA methylation
Epigenesis, Genetic
Epigenetic inheritance
Epigenetics
Gene expression
Gene Expression Regulation, Plant
Gene Silencing
Genes
Genetic aspects
Genetic engineering
Genetic Vectors
Genomes
Genomics
Genotypes
Health aspects
Methylation
Molecular modelling
Mutation
Plant Breeding
Plant Viruses - genetics
Plants - genetics
Post-transcription
Proteins
Review
RNA
RNA Interference
RNA polymerase
RNA-mediated interference
Symmetry
Vectors (Biology)
Viral infections
Viruses
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Summary:Virus-induced gene silencing (VIGS) is an RNA-mediated reverse genetics technology that has evolved into an indispensable approach for analyzing the function of genes. It downregulates endogenous genes by utilizing the posttranscriptional gene silencing (PTGS) machinery of plants to prevent systemic viral infections. Based on recent advances, VIGS can now be used as a high-throughput tool that induces heritable epigenetic modifications in plants through the viral genome by transiently knocking down targeted gene expression. As a result of the progression of DNA methylation induced by VIGS, new stable genotypes with desired traits are being developed in plants. In plants, RNA-directed DNA methylation (RdDM) is a mechanism where epigenetic modifiers are guided to target loci by small RNAs, which play a major role in the silencing of the target gene. In this review, we described the molecular mechanisms of DNA and RNA-based viral vectors and the knowledge obtained through altering the genes in the studied plants that are not usually accessible to transgenic techniques. We showed how VIGS-induced gene silencing can be used to characterize transgenerational gene function(s) and altered epigenetic marks, which can improve future plant breeding programs.
ISSN:1422-0067
1661-6596
1422-0067
DOI:10.3390/ijms24065608