VIGS – genomics goes functional

Genome and EST sequencing projects generate a wealth of sequence information for agronomically and phylogenetically important plant species of which the majority is difficult to subject to functional genomics. Virus-induced gene silencing (VIGS) provides a powerful tool to enable gene functional analysis for species not amenable to stable genetic transformation. Recent approaches allow the use of VIGS as a high throughput method that will exploit the potential of genome and transcriptome projects further.