Zinc finger homeodomain (ZF-HD) transcription factors play significant roles in plant growth and responses to environmental stresses. In this study, 32 ZF-HD genes identified the tobacco (Nicotiana tabacum L.) genome were divided into six groups according phylogenetic analysis with Arabidopsis tomato members. An examination of gene structures conserved motifs revealed relatively exon/intron mot...

Virus induced gene silencing (VIGS) is increasingly used to generate transient loss-of-function assays and has potential as a powerful reverse-genetics tool in functional genomic programs as a more rapid alternative to stable transformation. A previously described potato virus X (PVX) VIGS vector has been shown to trigger silencing in the permissive host Nicotiana benthamiana. This paper demons...

RNA silencing controls endogenous gene expression and drives defensive reactions against invasive nucleic acids like viruses. In plants, it has been demonstrated that RNA silencing can be transmitted through grafting between scions and silenced rootstocks to attenuate virus and viroid accumulation in the scions. This has been obtained mostly using transgenic plants, which may be a drawback in c...

Virus-induced gene silencing (VIGS) is an important tool for studying gene function. However, a number of factors highly restrict the application of VIGS, such as unstable efficiency and tissue-specific silencing. We developed a novel evaluation method for improving the applicability of VIGS vectors. In this method, 4 indexes were defined and utilized to evaluate VIGS efficiency by silencing th...