Hairpin RNA derived from viral NIa gene confers immunity to wheat streak mosaic virus infection in transgenic wheat plants

Muhammad Fahim, Ligia Ayala-Navarrete, Anthony A. Millar, Philip J. Larkin*

*Corresponding author for this work

    Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

    54 Citations (Scopus)

    Abstract

    Wheat streak mosaic virus (WSMV), vectored by Wheat curl mite, has been of great economic importance in the Great Plains of the United States and Canada. Recently, the virus has been identified in Australia, where it has spread quickly to all major wheat growing areas. The difficulties in finding adequate natural resistance in wheat prompted us to develop transgenic resistance based on RNA interference (RNAi). An RNAi construct was designed to target the nuclear inclusion protein 'a' (NIa) gene of WSMV. Wheat was stably cotransformed with two plasmids: pStargate-NIa expressing hairpin RNA (hpRNA) including WSMV sequence and pCMneoSTLS2 with the nptII selectable marker. When T1 progeny were assayed against WSMV, ten of sixteen families showed complete resistance in transgenic segregants. The resistance was classified as immunity by four criteria: no disease symptoms were produced; ELISA readings were as in uninoculated plants; viral sequences could not be detected by RT-PCR from leaf extracts; and leaf extracts failed to give infections in susceptible plants when used in test-inoculation experiments. Southern blot hybridization analysis indicated hpRNA transgene integrated into the wheat genome. Moreover, accumulation of small RNAs derived from the hpRNA transgene sequence positively correlated with immunity. We also showed that the selectable marker gene nptII segregated independently of the hpRNA transgene in some transgenics, and therefore demonstrated that it is possible using these techniques, to produce marker-free WSMV immune transgenic plants. This is the first report of immunity in wheat to WSMV using a spliceable intron hpRNA strategy.

    Original languageEnglish
    Pages (from-to)821-834
    Number of pages14
    JournalPlant Biotechnology Journal
    Volume8
    Issue number7
    DOIs
    Publication statusPublished - Sept 2010

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