Detection of Recombinant Viral Coat Protein in Transgenic Plants

The discovery that the expression of a viral coat protein in transgenic plants confers protection to infection by homologous and related viruses (1 –4 ) revolutionized the field of plant breeding. The approach of “coat protein-mediated protection” (CPMP) became an extensively studied strategy for many researchers and companies. Coat protein-mediated protection has been demonstrated to be effective against members of more than 10 groups of RNA viruses (3 ), but the molecular mechanism of the protection still remains unclear (5 ,6 ). The phenotype of virus-derived resistance in transformed plants can vary, case-by-case, from a simple delay in normal symptom development, or partial inhibition of virus replication, to complete immunity to challenge virus or viral RNA inoculation.