Use of geminiviral vectors for functional genomics

Virus-induced gene silencing (VIGS) can be used to study the function of a gene by downregulating its expression and analyzing the resulting phenotype. VIGS is a handy tool that is less time consuming and labor intensive than other methods for generating mutants. Geminiviruses are particularly convenient and valuable choices as VIGS vectors in functional genomics. The small size of their DNA genome, the simplicity of the methods for inoculation, their wide host range and their conserved genome organization are just a few of the advantageous characteristics that this group of viruses has to offer. Geminivirus-based vectors have proved to be very efficient in VIGS systems, and further development of these systems will most probably permit their application in studies of the functional genomics of important crops that are recalcitrant to other forms of analysis.