Recent patents in RNA silencing in plants: constructs, methods and applications in plant biotechnology

RNA silencing is a recently discovered mechanism to regulate gene expression at transcriptional and posttranscriptional levels. It is based on the recognition and methylation of target genes or cleavage of target mRNAs by small RNA molecules, with length varying from 21 to 24 nucleotides. RNA silencing plays an important role modulating most of the important cell processes, such as growth, development or stress response. During the past few years, diverse strategies have been applied to exploit RNA silencing as a tool to create plants with enhanced economical properties or able to cope with pathogens or abiotic stress. This review describes the most important patents related to RNA silencing in plants, which disclose vectors designed to induce RNA silencing by hairpin RNAs, amplicons or virus-based plasmids, methods for detection and quantification of silencing as well as general uses in plant biotechnology.