Epigenetics and Gene Silencing in Transgenic Plants

The introduction of transgenes in genetically modified plants can be silenced and also cause the silencing of endogenous plant genes.In this mechanism, silencing can occur transcriptional level and post transcriptional level but in case of silencing the endogenous genes seems predominantly posttranscriptionally.A major factor of this research to dissect the process of these sequence homology dependent gene silencing phenomena and different factors plays a role such as DNA methylation, transgene copy number as well as gene expression factors and possible modification of RNAs.Undesired transgene silencing is one of major concern in transgene technology used in crop improvements and this review gives the relationship between these factors and the bridge between transcriptional and post transcriptional gene silencing and discuss various observation correlated with silencing of gene.