Efficient Gene Silencing in Intact Plant Cells Using siRNA Delivered By Functional Graphene Oxide Nanoparticles

Delivery of small interfering RNA (siRNA) to intact plants for gene silencing mainly relies on viral vectors and Agrobacterium-mediated transformation due to the barrier of intact plant cell wall. Here, we reported that polymer functionalized graphene oxide nanoparticles (GONs) enable siRNA transfer into intact plant cells and bring about efficient gene silencing. We found that sheeted GONs could efficiently load siRNA to form small sized, near-spheroidal GONs-siRNA complex, which could be across the cell wall and internalize in the plant cell. The GONs-siRNA exhibited transient and strong silencing (97.2 % efficiency) in plant tissues at 24 h after treatment and returned to normal level at 5 days after treatment. This method has the obvious advantages of efficient, transient, simple, stability and well biocompatibility, which should greatly stimulate the application of nanomaterials as gene-engineering tools in plant research.