Retracted: An enhanced transient expression system in plants based on suppression of gene silencing by the p19 protein of tomato bushy stunt virus

Transient gene expression is a fast, flexible and reproducible approach to high-level expression of useful proteins. In plants, recombinant strains of Agrobacterium tumefaciens can be used for transient expression of genes that have been inserted into the T-DNA region of the bacterial Ti plasmid. A bacterial culture is vacuum-infiltrated into leaves, and upon T-DNA transfer, there is ectopic expression of the gene of interest in the plant cells. However, the utility of the system is limited because the ectopic protein expression ceases after 2-3 days. Here, we show that post-transcriptional gene silencing (PTGS) is a major cause for this lack of efficiency. We describe a system based on co-expression of a…

• DF
  Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, UK Government
• GC
  Gatsby Charitable Foundation
• BA
  Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council