Evaluating the ability of the Barley stripe mosaic virus-induced gene silencing system to simultaneously silence two wheat genes

Virus-induced gene silencing (VIGS) is an important tool for rapid assessment of gene function in plains. The ability of the Barley stripe mosaic virus (BSMV) VIGS system to simultaneously silence two genes was assessed by comparing the extent of down-regulation of the wheat PDS and SGT1 genes after wheat plants were infected with BSMV-VIGS constructs carrying 178bp fragments of the PDS and SGT1 genes linked in cis or after infection with single-gene silencing BSMV constructs carrying PDS or SGT1 alone or with a mixture of the single-gene constructs. Although significant variation occurred in these studies it was clearly demonstrated that two wheat genes can be silenced simultaneously by a single BSMV-VIGS construct.