VIGS: A Tool to Study Fruit Development in Solanum lycopersicum

Abstract

A visually traceable system for fast analysis of gene functions based on Fruit-VIGS methodology is described. In our system, the anthocyanin accumulation from purple transgenic tomato lines provides the appropriate background for fruit-specific gene silencing. The tomato Del/Ros1 background ectopically express Delila (Del) and Rosea1 (Ros1) transgenes under the control of fruit ripening E8 promoter, activating specifically anthocyanin biosynthesis during tomato fruit ripening. The Virus-Induced Gene Silencing (VIGS) of Delila and Rosea1 produces a color change in the silenced area easily identifiable. Del/Ros1 VIGS is achieved by agroinjection of an infective clone of Tobacco Rattle Virus (pTRV1 and pTRV2 binary plasmids) directly into the tomato fruit. The infective clone contains a small fragment of Del and Ros1 coding regions (named DR module). The co-silencing of reporter Del/Ros1 genes and a gene of interest (GOI) in the same region enables us to identify the precise region where silencing is occurring. The function of the GOI is established by comparing silenced sectors of fruits where both GOI and reporter DR genes have been silenced with fruits in which only the reporter DR genes have been silenced. The Gateway vector pTRV2_DR_GW was developed to facilitate the cloning of different GOIs together with DR genes. Our tool is particularly useful to study genes involved in metabolic processes during fruit ripening, which by themselves would not produce a visual phenotype.

Tomato (Solanum lycopersicum L.) in the service of biotechnology

“…This alternative technology could provide a rapid tool for the functional analysis of the genes of interest (transgenes) (Wróblewski et al 2005). An important breakthrough in the fast reverse genetics was achieved by using a powerful tool-virus induced gene silencing (VIGS) technology Fernandez-Moreno et al 2013). Jaberolansar et al (2010) and Romero et al (2011) successfully demonstrated that the Tobacco Rattle Virus (TRV)-based VIGS vector could be used in tomato to silence genes.…”

The state-of-the-art of grapevine biotechnology and new breeding technologies (NBTS)

“…VIGS is one of the most widely used genomic tools, displaying several advantages such as allowing easy and rapid gene silencing, with no need for stable plant transformation, and enabling both forward and reverse genetic approaches in many crop species (Senthil-Kumar and Mysore, 2011). VIGS has been successfully used to better define the role of genes involved in various plant processes including fruit development (Fernandez-Moreno et al, 2013) or abiotic stress tolerance (Ramegowda et al, 2014).…”

Tomato tolerance to abiotic stress: a review of most often engineered target sequences

“…Such an approach can assure fast implementation of the functional analysis of the genes of interest (GOI) (Wróblewski et al 2005;Fernandez et al 2009). Fundamental progress in rapid reverse genetics was accomplished by employing RNAi (RNA interference) strategy (Orzaez and Granell 2009;Fernandez-Moreno et al 2013). In plants, RNAi can be induced in two ways: by a transgene (TIGS, transgene induced gene silencing) or a virus (VIGS, virus-induced gene silencing).…”