Resistance to potyviruses in plants has been provided mainly by selecting natural variant alleles of eukaryotic translation initiation factors (elF) 4E in many crops. However, the sources of such variability for breeding can be limited for certain crop species while new virus isolates continue to emerge. Different mutagenesis methods have been applied to inactivate the eIF4E genes to generate virus resistance, but with limited success due to the physiological importance of translation factors and their redundancy. Researchers at INRAE using new plant genome editing techniques have inactivated or modified genomes at specific loci to confer pathogen resistance.
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