Figure 1.

Schematic representation of the position and structures of the synthetic dsRNA, dsDNAs, and short DNA oligonucleotides used in this study for external plant treatments. The synthetic dsRNAs and DNAs were designed based on the pZP-RCS2 vector region encoding for the NPTII (a) or EGFP (b) transgenes. The long and short DNA molecules were designed to mimic dsRNA and siRNA, respectively. 2 × P35S—the doubled 35S promoter of the cauliflower mosaic virus (CaMV); NPTII—the neomycin phosphotransferase II (NPTII) gene; Tnos—nopaline synthase terminator. D1, D1Me, D3, D3Me—NPTII-encoding siRNA-mimicking DNA olignucleotides phosphorylated at 5′-ends and modified by 2′-O-methylation at 3′ ends.