Pests and plant diseases can cause crop losses and can be a
threat to global food security. The disease is now fought with a pesticide,
that is sprayed all over plants and could also cause harm to your health. Dr.
Minna Poranen found a new approach to plant protection, which involves plants
fighting against pathogens with double stranded RNA molecules. This can be
sprayed directly onto the leaves without harmful consequences. This vaccine
triggers an innate defense mechanism of plants known as a RNA inference. This
is beneficial because you can choose which pathogens you want to target by
using RNA molecules, which share sequence, identify with the pest's genes,
which prevents their expression. This allows us to target the plant disease or
pest and keeps the expression of genes in the plant protected. The Academy of Finland’s Synthetic Biology
Research Programme demonstrated the efficacy of RNA based vaccines, using it
against plant virus infections. There is
no release date as to when this vaccine will be made available because there is
no relevant legislation yet.
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