Satellite RNA from bamboo mosaic virus as a vector for foreign gene expression in plants

摘要

A satellite RNA was found to be naturally associated with bamboo mosaic virus (BaMV-V) isolated from infected Bambusa vulgaris McClure. Nucleotide sequence revealed that this satellite RNA genome contains 836 nucleotides and encodes a 20 kDa protein. Infectious transcripts have been generated from full length cDNA downstream T7 RNA polymerase promoter. Precise replacement of open reading frame (ORF) of cDNA of satellite RNA with sequence encoding bacterial CAT (chloramphenicol acetyltransferase) resulted in high level expression of CAT in infected dicotyledon plants, Chenopodium quinoa and tobacco (Nicotiana benthamiana) in the presence of baMV genomic RNA. Thus, this satellite system is potentially useful as a satellite-based plant expression vector.