Scientists from the All-Russian Research Institute of Agricultural Biotechnology (VNIISB) have found targets for genetic editing of plants of the Solanaceae family in order to obtain crops resistant to the Y-virus.
Potato virus Y is the most harmful and widespread causative agent of viral diseases of this plant. It can cause economically significant damage in the cultivation of other vegetable crops (tomato, pepper, eggplant) and ornamental plants (petunia). In the list of 10 plant viruses of the highest priority for molecular research, the Y-virus ranks fifth.
Chemical preparations are ineffective against pathogens of virosis (infectious diseases), and only the cultivation of crops resistant to them is able to protect plants from viruses.
Scientists of the laboratory of plant stress resistance of the All-Russian Research Institute of Plant Protection in the process of studying the molecular mechanisms of interaction in the potato - Y-virus system revealed mutations of the target gene leading to a violation of the interaction with the viral protein VPg of the potato virus Y.
“The identification of these mutations is necessary for the subsequent work on editing the plant genome in order to obtain forms resistant to the Y virus,” said Vasily Taranov, head of the laboratory, Candidate of Biological Sciences.
The advantage of CRISPR / Cas, a technology that scientists work with, is that it allows you to create or improve varieties by introducing mutations only in the target genes, without affecting the rest.
At the current stage of work, laboratory staff have already created de novo alleles of the target gene with point mutations and selected, based on the results of yeast two-hybrid analysis, those alleles that are potentially capable of increasing plant resistance to the Y virus, encoding a translation initiation factor with an impaired ability to bind to the viral protein VPg (N ).
The identified molecular mechanisms of resistance can be applied in biotechnology and breeding in order to obtain plants resistant to the Y.