Post-transcriptional Gene Silencing(PTGS) and Its Application to Crop Genetic Improvement

The dramatic progress in PTGS or RNAi has demonstrated its potential value for creating plant mutants. PTGS was defined as sequence-specific gene silencing triggered by double-strand RNA in 1998. Here, the progress in mechanism of PTGS, the construct design of intron splicing hpRNA for plant transformation and expression, the phenotypic stability of the gene silencing over generations and the application of PTGS to crop genetic improvement were summarized. The gene silencing effects could be inherited stably over several generations and the changed traits could be recombined by crossing, making this approach a reliable technique for genetic modification of crops.