Research news

Plant interference

William Wells

Genome Biology 2000, 1:spotlight-20000428-03 doi:10.1186/gb-spotlight-20000428-03


The electronic version of this article is the complete one and can be found online at:


Published:28 April 2000

© 2000 BioMed Central Ltd

Research news

A simple method for generating loss-of-function plant mutants is described by Chuang and Meyerowitz in the April 25 Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 2000, 97:4985-4990 [Read the abstract on PubMed]). Chuang and Meyerowitz use Agrobacterium-mediated transformation of Arabidopsis thaliana to achieve RNA interference. Their sense/antisense construct produces a hairpin double-stranded RNA. This reproduces the loss of gene function that has been seen in other organisms after injection of double-stranded RNA. There is, however, some variability in the strength of the response depending on the identity of the target gene.

References

  1. [http://broccoli.caltech.edu/~meyerowitz/html/.index.html] webcite

    The Meyerowitz Lab homepage

  2. [http://www.pnas.org/] webcite

    PNAS online journal

  3. Specific and heritable genetic interference by double-stranded RNA in arabidopsis thaliana.

    PubMed Abstract | Publisher Full Text | PubMed Central Full Text OpenURL

  4. Genetic requirements for inheritance of RNAi in C. elegans.

    PubMed Abstract | Publisher Full Text OpenURL