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Updated: Feb 2, 2026

Transmitting Plant Viruses Using Whiteflies
Published on: November 8, 2013
Conferring DNA virus resistance with high specificity in plants using virus-inducible genome-editing system
Xiang Ji1,2, Xiaomin Si1,2, Yi Zhang3
1State Key Laboratory of Plant Cell and Chromosome Engineering, Center for Genome Editing, Institute of Genetics and Developmental Biology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China.
Abstract:
The CRISPR/Cas9 system has recently been engineered to confer resistance to geminiviruses in plants. However, we show here that the usefulness of this antiviral strategy is undermined by off-target effects identified by deep sequencing in Arabidopsis. We construct two virus-inducible CRISPR/Cas9 vectors that efficiently inhibit beet severe curly top virus (BSCTV) accumulation in both transient assays (Nicotiana benthamiana) and transgenic lines (Arabidopsis). Deep sequencing detects no off-target effect in candidate sites of the transgenic Arabidopsis. This kind of virus-inducible genome-editing system should be widely applicable for generating virus-resistant plants without off-target costs.
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