RNA-mediated virus resistance in transgenic plants

In recent years the concept of pathogen-derived resistance (PDR) has been successfully exploited for conferring resistance against viruses in many crop plants. Starting with coat protein-mediated resistance, the range has been broadened to the use of other viral genes as a source of PDR. However, in the course of the efforts, often no clear correlation could be made between expression levels of the transgenes and observed virus resistance levels. Several reports mentioned high resistance levels using genes incapable of producing protein, but in these cases, even plants accumulating high amounts of transgene RNA were not most resistant. To accommodate these unexplained observations, a resistance mechanism involving specific breakdown of viral RNAs has been proposed. Recent progress towards understanding the RNA-mediated resistance mechanism and similarities with the co-suppression phenomenon will be discussed.