Project dates: 2024 - Ongoing
Every year, diseases caused by plant viruses cause billions in losses for agriculture in Australia and worldwide, affecting the revenue of farmers and contributing to food insecurity. Bananas (Musa sp.) are one of the most important plant crops worldwide. Virus diseases, such as banana bunchy top virus (BBTV), cause major production losses in some countries. One of the main mechanisms of defence against virus infection in plants is through the action of small RNAs (sRNAs), a process commonly known as RNA silencing or RNA interference (RNAi). Researchers have exploited this RNAi pathway to provide plants with protection against virus infection. However, an important limitation of this process relates to the ability of virus genomes to rapidly accumulate mutations, resulting in a loss of resistance in a short amount of time. In addition, since RNAi relies on sequence specificity, usually only one virus can be targeted, restricting the scale of protection.
To overcome these limitations, we propose to use MicroRNA-Induced Gene Silencing (MIGS), an efficient, yet, still poorly explored method to trigger RNAi in plants. A major advantage of MIGS compared with other more established RNAi approaches (such as hairpin RNAs or artificial microRNAs) is the potential to target several sequences at the same time. This could allow a single MIGS construct to confer resistance to more than one virus, or to target multiple regions within a virus genome, thereby reducing the potential for viruses to evade the host RNAi response. In this project, we will establish a platform for MIGS in banana and use banana streak virus as a model for demonstrating this approach for the control of virus infection in plants.
Project team
Project funding
