Posttranscriptional gene silencing (PTGS) is a powerful tool to understand and control plant metabolic pathways, which is central to plant biotechnology. PTGS is commonly accomplished through delivery of small interfering RNA (siRNA) into cells. Standard plant siRNA delivery methods (Agrobacterium and viruses) involve coding siRNA into DNA vectors and are only tractable for certain plant species. Here, we develop a nanotube-based platform for direct delivery of siRNA and show high silencing efficiency in intact plant cells. We demonstrate that nanotubes successfully deliver siRNA and silence endogenous genes, owing to effective intracellular delivery and nanotube-induced protection of siRNA from nuclease degradation. This study establishes that nanotubes could enable a myriad of plant biotechnology applications that rely on RNA delivery to intact cells.

转录后基因沉默（PTGS）是理解和控制植物代谢途径的强大工具，是植物生物技术的核心。PTGS 通常是通过将小干扰 RNA (siRNA) 递送到细胞中来完成的。标准植物 siRNA 递送方法（农杆菌和病毒）涉及将 siRNA 编码到 DNA 载体中，并且仅适用于某些植物物种。在这里，我们开发了一种基于纳米管的平台，用于直接递送 siRNA，并在完整植物细胞中显示出高沉默效率。我们证明，由于有效的细胞内递送和纳米管诱导的 siRNA 免受核酸酶降解的保护，纳米管成功地递送 siRNA 并沉默内源基因。这项研究表明，纳米管可以实现多种依赖 RNA 递送至完整细胞的植物生物技术应用。