CSIRO exports gene silencing technology worldwide

Gene silencing using hairpin RNAi was first developed by Dr Peter Waterhouse and his CSIRO Plant Industry team in Canberra and is used to turn down or switch off the activity of genes in plants and animals.

This revolutionary technology has since stormed the world helping researchers in numerous countries, including Australia, identify and understand the function of different genes.

In 2000 the complete genome of the plant Arabidopsis was sequenced, but sequencing of a genome only identifies what genes are present, not what they do.

Arabidopsis is used as a 'model' plant; identifying the function of all its genes will reveal a lot about the genes in other plants, which could lead to the development of new and improved plant varieties.

In Europe a consortium of leading scientific organisations is using CSIRO's gene silencing technology to identify and determine what each gene does in Arabidopsis.

CSIRO Plant Industry is also looking at different Arabidopsis genes to determine their function, and with new high throughput gene silencing developed by CSIRO Plant Industry's Dr Chris Helliwell this can be done faster than ever.

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