Farmers can use such cut-off genes to accelerate growth, enhance plant nutrient, protect them from insects and viruses. This technique makes it possible to change the signs of plants, leaving their DNA unchanged.
«The substance can be used immediately, you do not have to wait years until the DNA is modified or the new variety is brought out», — Says David Bolcombe of Cambridge, who is studying the technology to suppress gene expression in plants. Thus one substance can be used on the most different kinds and grades.
Companies such as the "Monsanto Company" already develop similar substances that penetrate inside insects and kill them, disabling certain vital genes.
Scientists from the University of Queensland in Australia have managed to achieve a long-term effect of switching genes off within plant cells. They protected the tobacco plants from the effect of the virus for 20 days using only one application of a gene that disconnects the substance. This technique allows changing various signs in plants, but scientists have not yet conducted such experiments, focusing on crop protection technology.
Turning off genes uses a natural defense system. When viruses are introduced into cells, the cells cut out a portion of the virus RNA to produce small samples of double-stranded RNA that are used to recognize and destroy any RNA that matches the sample. Without viral RNA there are no viral proteins, which means that viruses can not reproduce.
RNA interference can be used to block any proteins. Attempts to create medicines based on this technology for humans have not yet succeeded, as when injected into the blood RNA quickly decay. And in plants it works like this:
Plant viruses are a problem for agriculture around the world and in Ukraine, and none of the funds currently available are directed directly at them. Farmers, of course, can grow virus-resistant varieties, if, of course, such exist, or kill carrier organisms, such as aphids. So, if the antiviral substance shows itself well in the field, it will be highly in demand.
True, there is a big problem — the cost.
Clay nanoparticles are cheap, but production of RNA is expensive. A couple of years ago, one gram of such a substance, which would have sufficed for a small field, cost 100,000 dollars. But this is changing rapidly. For example, the company Apse aims to establish a mass production of RNA for only $ 2 per gram.
The substance that turns off genes will be safer than common pesticides. RNA can not penetrate the human skin and quickly decomposes in the body.
