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Engineered Disease Resistance in Cotton Using RNA-Interference to Knock down Cotton leaf curl Kokhran virus-Burewala and Cotton leaf curl Multan betasatellite Expression

Cotton leaf curl virus disease (CLCuD) is caused by a suite of whitefly-transmitted begomovirus species and strains, resulting in extensive losses annually in India and Pakistan. RNA-interference (RNAi) is a proven technology used for knockdown of gene expression in higher organisms and viruses. In this study, a small interfering RNA (siRNA) construct was designed to target the AC1 gene of Cotton leaf curl Kokhran virus-Burewala (CLCuKoV-Bu) and the beta C1 gene and satellite conserved region of the Cotton leaf curl Multan betasatellite (CLCuMB). The AC1 gene and CLCuMB coding and non-coding regions function in replication initiation and suppression of the plant host defense pathway, respectively. The construct, V b, was transformed into cotton plants using the Agrobacterium-mediated embryo shoot apex cut method. Results from fluorescence in situ hybridization and karyotyping assays indicated that six of the 11 T-1 plants harbored a single copy of the V beta transgene. Transgenic cotton plants and non-transgenic (susceptible) test plants included as the positive control were challenge-inoculated using the viruliferous whitefly vector to transmit the CLCuKoV-Bu/ CLCuMB complex. Among the test plants, plant V beta-6 was asymptomatic, had the lowest amount of detectable virus, and harbored a single copy of the transgene on chromosome six. Absence of characteristic leaf curl symptom development in transgenic V beta-6 cotton plants, and significantly reduced begomoviral-betasatellite accumulation based on real-time polymerase chain reaction, indicated the successful knockdown of CLCuKoV-Bu and CLCuMB expression, resulting in leaf curl resistant plants.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:arizona.edu/oai:arizona.openrepository.com:10150/626109
Date14 September 2017
CreatorsAhmad, Aftab, Zia-Ur-Rehman, Muhammad, Hameed, Usman, Qayyum Rao, Abdul, Ahad, Ammara, Yasmeen, Aneela, Akram, Faheem, Bajwa, Kamran, Scheffler, Jodi, Nasir, Idrees, Shahid, Ahmad, Iqbal, Muhammad, Husnain, Tayyab, Haider, Muhammad, Brown, Judith
ContributorsUniv Arizona, Sch Plant Sci
PublisherMDPI AG
Source SetsUniversity of Arizona
LanguageEnglish
Detected LanguageEnglish
TypeArticle
Rights© 2017 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license.
Relationhttp://www.mdpi.com/1999-4915/9/9/257

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