Plant Vectors, Bacteriophages, Recombinant Viruses, Vascular System, Cauliflower Mosaic Viruses, Gemini Viruses

www.molecular-plant-biotechnology.info

	Plant Vectors - Like bacteriophages, even plant viruses can transfer recombinant genes into plants. Plant viruses are attractive as vectors for several reasons. 1. Plant viruses adsorb to and infect cells of intact plants. 2. Relatively large amounts of virus can be produced from infected plants, leading to the prospect of large amount of foreign protein being expressed from recombinant viruses.
3. Some virus infections are systematic. They are spread throughout the whole plant. In some cases intact viruses are transported through the vascular system of plant. Even with interesting characteristics, at present, plant viruses have not been developed to the stilge where they are widely used as vectors, but progress has been made only with the two groups of plant viruses, cauliflower mosaic viruses (CaMV) and Gemini viruses, both DNA viruses.