Viroid resistance

In this project, the RNA interference (RNAi) mechanism [RNA interference (RNAi)] will be used to generate potato spindle tuber viroid (PSTVd) resistant tobacco and tomato plants. The RNAi strategy has been successfully applied to develop numerous virus resistant plants. It is based on the activation of the host RNAi mechanism prior to virus infection. Activation can be achieved by the introduction of hairpin constructs. When hairpin constructs are transcribed double stranded RNA (dsRNA) is generated. DsRNA is the most efficient RNAi inducer. Plants producing dsRNA that shares sequence homology with a virus genome are normally resistant against this virus. In these plants, the viral RNA gets degraded before the viral silencing suppressor protein (Viral suppressors of RNAi) is synthesized. Analogous to the ‘virus experiments’, we would like to activate the RNAi mechanism by introducing PSTVd-specific hairpin constructs (Fig. 1) into tobacco and tomato. Transcription of these constructs should then result in initiation the degradation of incoming PSTVd RNA.

Figure 1: PSTVd-hairpin construct

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