ABSTRACT
Virus-induced gene silencing (VIGS) is a powerful reverse genetic technology used to unravel the functions of genes. It uses viral vectors carrying a fragment of a gene of interest to generate double-stranded RNA, which initiates the silencing of the target gene. The virus vector is used to induce RNA-mediated silencing of a gene or genes in the host plant. A wide range of viruses have been modified for use as VIGS vectors. As the name suggests, VIGS uses the host plant’s natural defense mechanisms against viral infection to silence plant genes. VIGS is methodologically simple and is widely used to determine gene functions, including disease resistance, abiotic stress, biosynthesis of secondary metabolites, and signal transduction pathways. The growing amount of plant genomic and transcriptome data provide a quick way to select important genes for functional analysis. Recently, the VIGS system, besides its ability to silence genes has found an important application in the CRISPR/Cas editing system, a most recent and promising genetic tools for targeted genome editing and precise knocking out of entire genes.
