Viruses as helpers
A new tool being developed at Iowa State will help soybean genomics scientists speed up their research, save money and ultimately, make a better soybean.
John Hill and Chunquan Zhang of the plant pathology department are working to optimize the bean pod mottle virus (BPMV) vector, a project supported by a Plant Sciences Institute grant for innovative research. The Hill lab, including research associate Al Eggenberger, has been working on soybean viruses for a long time.
The virus vector silences the expression of targeted plant genes. It carries the sequence of a soybean gene and the plant responds by shutting off the targeted gene.
"With our method you can target any gene or genes you're looking for," said Zhang.
The advantages of plant virus-based vectors are speed and efficiency. To silence a plant gene by conventional genetic engineering might take weeks or even months. The BPMV vector can change soybean gene expression in a matter of days.
"This gives you the ability to rapidly test a lot of genes, rather than plod along one by one through the typical transformation technology where you might be lucky to have an efficiency rate of five percent," said Hill. He added that knocking out some genes by conventional methods may be lethal to the plant.
Hill said that with the vector, discoveries made in other crops can be used to improve soybeans. If a gene is found to be involved in virus resistance in another plant, bioinformatic searches can turn up a candidate soybean gene that is similar. Then, the vector can be used to inactivate that soybean gene to see if it too is involved in virus resistance.
"Basically, this could have a major impact in all areas of soybean production including diseases," said Hill.
