Agrobacterium and Viral Vectors-Mediated in vivo Gene Silencing Assays in Plants

Functional genomics could be investigated by over-expressing or silencing a gene sequence towards a better understanding of its biological function at different organisation level (plant cell, tissue, organ or even in the whole plant) in response to various situations (plant developmental stages, environmental stress, plant-pathogen interactions). Actually, several trends are focusing on transient expression systems without the need to produce stable transgenic plants [1,2]. These non-transgenic approaches involve a battery of rapid and versatile transient assays mediated either by Agrobacterium tumefaciens or by viral-based vectors [3]. Both of these systems have been extensively applied recently for high throughput reverse genetics and functional gene analysis in plants [4]. Agro inoculation of viral infectious clones