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Gene Silencing

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Molecular Biology of Plant Viruses

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Abstract

The basic important characteristics of a transgenic plant are the stability of the transgene from generation to generation and the high degree of fidelity in expression of the transgene in each generation. Transgenic plants have, therefore, been widely employed for a variety of experimental purposes including for understanding gene function by engineering over-expression or under-expression of the relevant genes in wild type or mutant plants which generated important data about the role of the respective proteins. The development of transgenic plants also soon led to the efforts to create such transgenic plants that could overproduce a useful product, like vegetables, fruits, and seeds with enhanced food value and protein content, by over-expressing the particular plant protein by having multiple copies of a gene (as homologous transgenes) within a nucleus. Thus, the number of sequences of a particular gene in a transgenic plant was two or more, depending upon the number of transgene copies incorporated into the genome of a transformed plant.

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Authors
  1. Chuni L. Mandahar
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  1. Botany Department, Panjab University, India

    C. L. Mandahar

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© 1999 Springer Science+Business Media New York

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Mandahar, C.L. (1999). Gene Silencing. In: Mandahar, C.L. (eds) Molecular Biology of Plant Viruses. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4615-5063-1_13

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4615-5063-1_13

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Boston, MA

  • Print ISBN: 978-1-4613-7302-5

  • Online ISBN: 978-1-4615-5063-1

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