Analysis of Seed-specificity of Silencing fad^sub 2^ Gene Expression in Transgenic Rapeseed Line W-4 (Brassica napus L.)

This study aims to investigate the efficiency and specificity of RNAi silencing on the expression of endogenous fad2 gene in transgenic line W-4. The relative expression of fad2 gene in seeds at different developmental stages of 7th, 14th, 21st and 28th day after flowering (DAF) as well as the root, stem, leaf at winter seedling stages of both the transgenic line W-4 and non-transgenic control Westar by real-time fluorescence quantitative PCR. The results showed the relative expression of fad2 gene was gradually increasing with the days after flowering in the seeds of the control Westar, while it was found decreasing significantly since the 21st DAF in the seeds of the line W-4. The decline was up to 60% in comparison with the control Westar. The results above validated that RNA interference in transgenic rapeseed W-4 is at a seed-specific manner, not interfering with fad2 gene expression in organs such as the root, stem and leaf.