Improvement of economic and useful characters of wheat using RNA interference technology

Abstract

Wheat is a strategic cereal crop of global importance and plays a leading role in the food supply of mankind. Despite the general trend to increase in its production, climatic changes leading to significant temperature changes, unpredictable precipitation or droughts and the appearance of new races of pathogens and pests significantly affect its yield. In order to prevent the negative impact of changes in climatic conditions on the productivity of this crop, it is necessary to develop innovative technologies for improving the resistance of wheat to environmental stresses. RNA interference (RNAi) represents a new potential tool for wheat breeding by introducing small non-coding RNA sequences with the ability to silence gene expression in a sequence-specific manner. A decrease in the expression of a certain gene determines the acquisition of a new characteristic through the elimination or accumulation of certain plant traits, which leads to biochemical or phenotypic changes that the original plants do not have. This literature review describes the progress achieved over the past decades in the application of RNAi to create wheat plants with improved economic and valuable traits. The main stages of the gene silencing mechanism mediated by short interfering RNA (siRNA) and microRNA (miRNA), features of their biogenesis, modes of action and distribution are presented. Examples of the use of various biotechnological approaches to wheat improvement using gene transformation, endogenous and exogenous double-stranded RNA molecules (dsRNA) are given. The possibility of using RNAi technology to increase the nutritional value and quality of grain, remove toxic compounds and allergens is highlighted. Considerable attention is paid to the practical results of various applications of RNAi to increase the resistance of wheat to biotic stress factors, in particular, viruses, bacteria, fungi, insect pests, and nematodes. Examples of the use of siRNA-mediated RNAi and the role of miRNA in improving wheat tolerance to abiotic stresses are summarized.