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Gene silencing is an important but little understood regulatory mechanism in plants. Here we report that a viral sequence, initially identified as a mediator of synergistic viral disease, acts to suppress the establishment of both transgene-induced and virus-induced posttranscriptional gene silencing. The viral suppressor of silencing comprises the 5′-proximal region of the tobacco etch potyviral genomic RNA encoding P1, helper component-proteinase (HC-Pro) and a small part of P3, and is termed the P1/HC-Pro sequence. A reversal of silencing assay was used to assess the effect of the P1/HC-Pro sequence on transgenic tobacco plants (line T4) that are posttranscriptionally silenced for the uidA reporter gene. Silencing was lifted in offspring of T4 crosses with four independent transgenic lines expressing P1/HC-Pro, but not in offspring of control crosses. Viral vectors were used to assess the effect of P1/HC-Pro expression on virus-induced gene silencing (VIGS). The ability of a potato virus X vector expressing green fluorescent protein to induce silencing of a green fluorescent protein transgene was eliminated or greatly reduced when P1/HC-Pro was expressed from the same vector or from coinfecting potato virus X vectors. Expression of the HC-Pro coding sequence alone was sufficient to suppress virus-induced gene silencing, and the HC-Pro protein product was required for the suppression. This discovery points to the role of gene silencing as a natural antiviral defense system in plants and offers different approaches to elucidate the molecular basis of gene silencing.

Many biotechnological applications require high-level expression of transgenes in plants. One strategy to achieve this goal was the production of potato virus X (PVX) “amplicon” lines: transgenic lines that encode a replicating RNA virus vector carrying a gene of interest 1 . The idea was that transcription of the amplicon transgene would initiate viral RNA replication and gene expression, resulting in very high levels of the gene product of interest. This approach failed, however, because every amplicon transgene, in both tobacco and Arabidopsis thaliana , was subject to post-transcriptional gene silencing (PTGS) 1 , 2 , 3 . In PTGS, the transgene is transcribed but the transcripts fail to accumulate as a result of sequence-specific targeting and destruction 4 , 5 . Even though the amplicon locus is silenced, the level of β-glucuronidase (GUS) activity in a PVX/GUS line is similar to that in some transgenic lines expressing GUS from a conventional (not silenced) GUS locus 1 . This result suggested that the very high levels of expression originally envisioned for amplicons could be achieved if PTGS could be overcome and if the resulting plants did not suffer from severe viral disease. Here we report that high-level transgene expression can be achieved by pairing the amplicon approach with the use of a viral suppressor of PTGS, tobacco etch virus (TEV) helper component–proteinase (HC-Pro). Leaves of mature tobacco plants co-expressing HC-Pro and a PVX/GUS amplicon accumulate GUS to ∼3% of total protein. Moreover, high-level expression occurs without viral symptoms and, when HC-Pro is expressed from a mutant transgene, without detrimental developmental phenotypes.