Elucidation of strigolactone biosynthesis in tomato using VIGS and benthamiana transient expression

Abstract:

Strigolactones are plant hormones that regulate various essential developmental functions. They are also a target of parasitic plants that invade the roots of host plants however and a lot of research is being done into their biosynthesis. So far, the biosynthesis of their diverse structures is largely unknown but recently, cytochrome P450 genes have been implicated in this process by Zhang et al. (2018). In this research, two tomato CYP (Solyc04g080100, Solyc07g055550) genes are tested for their involvement in strigolactone biosynthesis through a benthamiana transient expression experiment. To fully characterize these genes they also need to be silenced in the root system of tomato, but low silencing efficiency in the roots by traditional vectors makes this difficult. Therefore, using a modified tobacco rattle virus (TRV) vector called TRV2b (Valentine et al., 2004), an efficient virus induced gene silencing system is also established for characterizing these genes that is easy to perform and can effectively silence genes in the root system of tomato. This makes it an appropriate method for studying strigolactone biosynthesis genes.