Richard F. Allison

Significance of RNA Recombination in Capsid Protein-Mediated Virus-Resistant Transgenic Plants

Concerns over the environmental release of transgenic organisms that contain genes from other species range from moral issues to the potential flow of the transgenic genes to related species through normal outcrossing. One concern unique to virus-resistant transgenic plants is that all or a portion of the viral gene may be incorporated by RNA recombination into a different plant virus that may infect the transgenic plant. RNA recombination is a fundamental viral evolutionary mechanism. It occurs when the viral replication complex switches templates during synthesis of a complementary RNA strand and results in chimeric RNA molecules that represent a combination of two or more templates. Recombination between a challenging virus and the viral transgene could result in chimeric viruses with unique phenotype.