Artificial miRNAs for Specific Gene Silencing and Engineering Virus Resistance in Plants

Abstract

The sequence-specific gene silencing has gained widespread acceptance for its ease and direct use for functional analysis of genes. Of all the methods used for gene silencing, RNA interference (RNAi) has emerged as the potential tool which involves the targeting of gene at mRNA level. This works on the phenomenon of generating siRNAs from the transcribed double stranded RNA (dsRNA) precursors. The siRNAs hence formed target the mRNA and leads to its cleavage resulting into decreased transcript level [1,2]. This technique can be used to silence the genes to get the desired traits and hence it has proved to be a promising tool for crop improvement [2,3].