Summary Virus-induced gene silencing (VIGS) is an extremely powerful tool for plant functional genomics. We used Tobacco rattle virus (TRV)-derived VIGS vectors expressed from binary vectors within Agrobacterium to induce RNA silencing in plants. Leaf infiltration is the most common method of agroinoculation used for VIGS but this method has limitations as it is laborious for large-scale screen...

Recent studies have recognised the importance of pulmonary hypertension (PH) in sickle cell disease (SCD). The aim of this study was to determine the prevalence and prognostic impact of PH and its features in patients with SCD. 80 patients with SCD underwent baseline clinical evaluation, laboratory testing, 6-min walk tests (6MWTs) and echocardiography. Patients with a peak tricuspid regurgitan...

For TRECVID 2008 concept detection task, we principally focus on: (1) Early fusion of texture, edge and color features TECM, abbreviation of the combined TF*IDF weights based on SIFT features, Edge Histogram, and Color Moments. (2) To improve the training efficiency and explore the knowledge between concepts or hidden sub-domains more easily and efficiently, we propose a novel method based on L...

Cowpea mosaic virus (CPMV) replicates in close association with small membranous vesicles that are formed by rearrangements of intracellular membranes. To determine which of the viral proteins are responsible for the rearrangements of membranes and the attachment of the replication complex, we have expressed individual CPMV proteins encoded by RNA1 in cowpea protoplasts by transient expression ...

Research into the molecular basis of plant-insect interactions is hampered by the inability to alter the expression of individual genes in plants growing under natural conditions. The ability of virus-induced gene silencing (VIGS) to silence the expression of two jasmonate-induced genes known to mediate the expression of two potent direct defences (nicotine and proteinase inhibitors) that are p...

The 3374 nucleotide sequence of RNA2 from the British PEBV strain SP5 has been determined. The RNA includes three open reading frames flanked by 5' and 3' noncoding regions of 509 and 480 nucleotides. The open reading frames specify coat protein, a 29.6K product homologous to the 29.1K product of TRV(TCM) RNA2 and a 23K product not homologous to any previously described protein. The homology de...

BACKGROUND Avian reovirus (ARV) causes arthritis, tenosynovitis, runting-stunting syndrome (RSS), malabsorption syndrome (MAS) and immunosuppression in chickens. σB is one of the major structural proteins of ARV, which is able to induce group-specific antibodies against the virus. METHODS AND RESULTS The present study described the identification of two linear B-cell epitopes in ARV σB throug...

Cardiac morbidity, early mortality, and sudden death are the major consequences of sickle cell disease (SCD) in patients surviving into adulthood. Pulmonary hypertension (PH), elevated tricuspid regurgitant jet velocity (TRV), and diastolic dysfunction have all been identified to correlate with early mortality in adults with SCD. However, the unifying pathophysiology behind these abnormalities ...

With the increasing availability of aphid genomic data, it is necessary to develop robust functional validation methods to evaluate the role of specific aphid genes. This work represents the first study in which five different techniques, all based on RNA interference and on oral acquisition of double-stranded RNA (dsRNA), were developed to silence two genes, ALY and Eph, potentially involved i...