Genetic Engineering of Plants for Resistance to Viruses

Abstract

Historically, control of plant virus disease has involved numerous strategies which have often been combined to provide effective durable resistance in the field. In recent years, the dramatic advances obtained in plant molecular virology have enhanced our understanding of viral genome organizations and gene functions. Moreover, genetic engineering of plants for virus resistance has recently provided promising additional strategies for control of virus disease. At present, the most promising of these has been the expression of coat-protein coding sequences in plants transformed with a coat protein gene. Other potential methods include the expression of anti-sense viral transcripts in transgenic plants, the application of artificial anti-sense mediated gene regulation to viral systems, and the expression of viral satellite RNAs, RNAs with endoribonuclease activity, antiviral antibody genes, or human interferon genes in plants. © 1990 Springer-Verlag.