Sano Teruo, Barba Marina, Li Shi-Fang, Hadidi Ahmed
Hirosaki University, Japan.
GM Crops. 2010 Mar-Apr;1(2):80-6. doi: 10.4161/gmcr.1.2.11871.
Viroids are autonomously replicating, small single-stranded circular RNA pathogens that do not code for proteins and may cause diseases in infected, susceptible plants. They have the ability to induce both RNA-mediated transcriptional gene silencing (TGS) and post-transcriptional gene silencing (PTGS), or RNA silencing, in infected plants. Their induced RNA silencing has also been demonstrated in a wheat germ extract system. A possible role of RNA silencing in viroid pathogenicity and evolution has been discussed. It is suggested that RNA silencing can be employed to engineer plants for viroid resistance and attempts to produce these plants have been also discussed.
类病毒是自主复制的小型单链环状RNA病原体，不编码蛋白质，可在受感染的易感植物中引发疾病。它们能够在受感染的植物中诱导RNA介导的转录基因沉默（TGS）和转录后基因沉默（PTGS），即RNA沉默。它们诱导的RNA沉默也已在小麦胚芽提取物系统中得到证实。人们讨论了RNA沉默在类病毒致病性和进化中的可能作用。有人提出，可以利用RNA沉默技术培育抗类病毒的植物，并且也讨论了培育这些植物的尝试。
