Institut für die Sicherheit biotechnologischer Verfahren bei Pflanzen
To achieve plasticity and rapid adaptation, plants use epigenetic modifications to regulate gene expression during development and environmental stress. Viruses are after fungi a significant threat to plants since they can cause important economic loss. RNA silencing is the primary antiviral defense mechanism. However, viruses encode a viral suppressor of silencing, allowing them to overcome plant defense. Breeders use resistant plants; however, viruses adapt to the selection pressure and break many of these resistances. Furthermore, these resistances often do not protect against all virus strains. Rapeseed (Brassica napus L) is an economically important crop cultivated worldwide not only for food production but also as a renewable resource for fuel production. Like other crops, rapeseed plants are targets of several pathogens, among them viruses. Turnip yellows virus (TuYV), cauliflower mosaic virus (CaMV), and TuMV are the main viruses infecting rapeseed and cause important yield loss. Furthermore, these viruses are aphid-transmitted, which require extensive use of toxic insecticides to control them. For a successful infection, viruses hijack and interact with host factors termed susceptibility factors at different stages of the infection. We will silence susceptibility genes epigenetically to obtain virus resistance using Arabidopsis as proof of concept and rapeseed plants. We will use different techniques such as virus-induced gene silencing (VIGS), exogenous application of dsRNA, and modified CRISPR-Cas9 (dCas9) to stably methylate the promoter of selected host susceptibility genes to TuMV and TuYV. We will focus on these two viruses, but this strategy could be adapted to any virus or other environmental stress with known susceptibility factors.
Federal Ministry of Food and Agriculture
