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Virus-Based microRNA Silencing in Plants

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Virus-Induced Gene Silencing in Plants

Part of the book series: Methods in Molecular Biology ((MIMB,volume 2172))

Abstract

Virus-based microRNA silencing (VbMS) is an efficient, powerful, and high-throughput approach to screen and investigate the function of microRNAs (miRNAs) in plants. The VbMS system was originally developed in Nicotiana benthamiana and tomato (Solanum lycopersicum) and has been extended to various other plant species such as Arabidopsis, cotton, and wheat with different virus vectors. VbMS is generally designed to use virus vectors to direct the expression of miRNA target mimic (TM) molecules which can complementarily pair to target miRNAs and block their function. Here, we describe the TRV- and PVX-based VbMS approaches to silence endogenous miRNAs in N. benthamiana and tomato plants by Agrobacterium infiltration. This method can be further applied to other plant species using suitable virus vectors in combination with diverse TM strategies, which will facilitate functional studies of miRNAs in plants.

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Acknowledgments

We thank Dr. Yule Liu from Tsinghua University for providing the pTRV1 and pTRV2e vectors. This work was supported by a start-up fund from the Texas A&M AgriLife Research and a Hatch Project from USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture to JS (TEX0-1-9675), a fellowship from China Scholarship Council to GW (201708130105), a fellowship from China Scholarship Council to HJ (201707877008), and an Outstanding Youth Fund of Jiangsu Province (BK20160016) and a fund from the National Natural Science Foundation of China to TL (31671980).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Texas A&M AgriLife Research Center at Dallas, Texas A&M University System, Dallas, TX, USA

    Jinping Zhao, Haolang Jiang & Junqi Song

  2. Key Laboratory of Hebei Province for Plant Physiology and Molecular Pathology, Mycotoxin and Molecular Plant Pathology Laboratory, College of Life Sciences, Hebei Agricultural University, Baoding, China

    Guanyu Wang & Jingao Dong

  3. State Key Laboratory of Ecological Pest Control for Fujian and Taiwan Crops, College of Plant Protection, Fujian Agriculture and Forestry University, Fuzhou, China

    Haolang Jiang & Zonghua Wang

  4. Provincial Key Laboratory of Agrobiology, Jiangsu Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Nanjing, China

    Tingli Liu & Baolong Zhang

  5. Department of Plant Pathology & Microbiology, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX, USA

    Junqi Song

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  1. Jinping Zhao
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  4. Tingli Liu
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  6. Zonghua Wang
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  7. Baolong Zhang
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  8. Junqi Song
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Correspondence to Junqi Song .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. EA2106 Biomolécules et Biotechnologies Végétales, Université de Tours, Tours, France

    Vincent Courdavault

  2. EA2106 Biomolécules et Biotechnologies Végétales, Université de Tours, Tours, France

    Sébastien Besseau

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Zhao, J. et al. (2020). Virus-Based microRNA Silencing in Plants. In: Courdavault, V., Besseau, S. (eds) Virus-Induced Gene Silencing in Plants. Methods in Molecular Biology, vol 2172. Humana, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-0716-0751-0_18

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-0716-0751-0_18

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  • Publisher Name: Humana, New York, NY

  • Print ISBN: 978-1-0716-0750-3

  • Online ISBN: 978-1-0716-0751-0

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