Genome recoding: a review of basic concepts, current research and future prospects of virus attenuation for controlling plant viral diseases

Abstract

Plants are very susceptible to pathogens and every year, 25% of crop loss is caused by various types of pathogens including viruses. Many different strategies are being used for developing resistance against virus infection, including RNA silencing, and the genome editing including CRISPR-Cas-9 but these may produce variants/recombinants and could cause the problems for future crops. Another promising approach named as genome recoding or rewriting would be a better potential tool for controlling viral infections in plants. It relies on the concepts of replacement of synonymous codons, change in codon bias, codon pair bias and dinucleotide content. Recoding of the genome does not alter the amino acid sequences but it affects the expression level and translation efficiency. In the present report, the concept of synonymous codons, the basics of genome recoding and the possible strategies to generate genome recoded organisms are provided in details. Viral attenuation has been achieved by consideration of dinucleotide bias and codon pair bias manipulations and used in the synthesis of vaccines against various types of pathogenic bacteria and viruses. The idea of the future scope of genome recoding for developing virus-resistant plants and their challenges for the same are also comprehensively discussed. Although genome recoding is not yet tested on plants, however it could be very helpful in controlling plant viral diseases. So, it is a novel emerging area of research for developing viral resistant plants and thus would help in minimizing the agricultural losses in the near future.