Press releases
Please quote Nature Biotechnology as the source of these items.
The November 2007 issue of Nature Biotechnology is available online.
November 2007
RNA interference insecticides
Plants expressing a specific type of RNA molecule that kills infesting caterpillars could open the way to more targeted pesticides, suggest two independent papers published online this week in Nature Biotechnology.
RNA molecules are messengers that carry out the instructions encoded in DNA. When certain types of RNA are expressed in plant tissues, they kill specific insects that eat the plants but should not harm other organisms. The most effective current approach to protect plants from insects is to modify them to express a crystalline protein called Bt toxin, which disrupts the insect’s intestinal lining. However, Bt does not work on all insects pests, may inadvertently kill beneficial insects and may become redundant if harmful bugs develop resistance to it.
The two groups, led by Xiao-Ya Chen and James Roberts, show that when destructive insects – including the cotton bollworm, western corn rootworm, southern corn rootworm and Colorado potato beetle – ingest leaves engineered to express an RNA molecule that interferes with essential insect RNA molecules, the pest dies. Previous studies showed that this strategy worked when the interfering RNA was injected into insects, but these are the first reports showing success when plants are modified to express the interfering RNA.
An important advantage of this approach over the current alternatives is that the interfering RNA could probably be made to target pests very selectively. This could satisfy concerns about insecticides indiscriminately killing key links in the food chain.
Silencing a cotton bollworm P450 monooxygenase gene by plant-mediated RNAi impairs larval tolerance of gossypol pp 1307 - 1313
Ying-Bo Mao, Wen-Juan Cai, Jia-Wei Wang, Gao-Jie Hong, Xiao-Yuan Tao, Ling-Jian Wang, Yong-Ping Huang & Xiao-Ya Chen
Published online: 04 November 2007 | doi 10.1038/nbt1352
Control of coleopteran insect pests through RNA interference pp 1322 - 1326
James A Baum, Thierry Bogaert, William Clinton, Gregory R Heck, Pascale Feldmann, Oliver Ilagan, Scott Johnson, Geert Plaetinck, Tichafa Munyikwa, Michael Pleau, Ty Vaughn & James Roberts
Published online: 04 November 2007 | doi 10.1038/nbt1359