Abstract:

Virus-induced gene silencing (VIGS) is a recently developed technique for gene function studies in plants. In this study, the gusA transgenic tomato plant which constitutively expressed gusA gene was used as material. The gusA gene was silenced by VIGS for the preliminary tissue specificity analysis of VIGS in tomato. The results showed that gusA could be silenced in leafs, flowers, fruits, branches, stems and the points between branch and stem of tomato by virus-induced gene silencing. So VIGS as a powerful tool for the study of gene function could induce target gene systematic silencing in tomato.

Key words: Tomato, Virus-induced gene silencing (VIGS), Gene function, Tissue specificity