Ultra-short RNA insertions offer scalable, cost-effective gene silencing for agriculture

A team of researchers from the Spanish National Research Council has made a significant advance in plant biotechnology by developing a new method for silencing genes.

The novel technique uses ultra-short ribonucleic acid (RNA) sequences carried by genetically modified viruses to achieve genetic silencing, allowing the customization of plant traits. The work, published in the Plant Biotechnology Journal, opens up new avenues for crop improvement, functional genomics, and sustainable agriculture.

The new technique, called virus-mediated short RNA insertions (vsRNAi), represents a breakthrough in the field that explores the use of viral vectors to improve the agronomic characteristics of crops.

By using a benign plant virus, short RNA molecules are transported to plants, triggering a process known as RNA interference (RNAi) to specifically silence genes, preventing the information in a gene from being translated into a protein. This is a new approach that improves the efficiency of reducing the expression of target plant genes.

The researchers have used a combination of comparative genomics and transcriptomics to design vsRNAi targeting specific genes in plants, demonstrating that the insertion of such short RNA sequences, consisting of 24 nucleotides (the basic structural units of ribonucleic acid), can effectively silence genes in plants. These are ultra-short sequences, as viral vector technology typically uses sequences of around 300 nucleotides.

Image source: García et al. (2025), Plant Biotechnology Journal.