Ingeniería genética vegetal para resistencia viral y vectores virales en genética reversa

plants' natural defence mechanism, known as post-transcriptional gene silencing (ptgs), is mediated by small rna molecules involved in a sequence-specific interaction to inhibit gene expression through rna silencing. the principle of this mechanism has proven to be an excellent strategy for controlling plant diseases caused by viruses, its importance lying in the fact that currently there are no effective and environmentally-friendly methods for controlling many plant viruses. the nature of ptgs allows ascertaining gene function through reverse genetics by using virus-induced gene silencing (vigs,) or by rna interference (irna). vigs is particularly useful for studying genes in crop species. this paper briefly presents how rna-mediated gene silencing works and its possible applications in designing viral control strategies.