A Personal History of Virus-Based Vector Construction

Abstract

The ability to express foreign genes or to silence endogenous genes in plants has revolutionized both basic and applied plant biology. Virus-based expression systems, in which the foreign mRNA is greatly amplified by virus replication, can produce very high levels of proteins or peptides in leaves and other tissues. Vectors have been available for about 25 years. They are commonplace as laboratory tools, but their initial commercial expectations have not been met for numerous reasons. Yet, applications of viral vectors are still evolving. This chapter focuses on our laboratory's involvement in developing virus-based vectors in plants. We created the first 'add-a-gene' vectors that were capable of replication and movement throughout plants. These vectors were based on tobacco mosaic virus. Through the evolution of several prototypes, stable vectors were developed that produced relatively large amounts of product in plants. Recently, we created similar vectors for citrus trees based on citrus tristeza virus. Even though the citrus vectors were created as laboratory tools for improving the crop, circumstances have changed the applications to protection and therapy of trees in the field.