Tuesday, March 10, 2015

Crop Pests Stopped by Plants That Cripple Attackers' RNA


Invasive species are known to be the cause of many devastating agricultural failures throughout history. One insect in particular, dubbed the "international super pest", is the Colorado potato beetle (pictured above). This beetle eats different crops all across the world, and costs the agricultural industry billions of dollars per year. The worst thing about this beetle is that it is resistant to practically every insecticide and has very few predators. The good news is scientists have finally come up with a way to protect crops from this pest.

A team of researches in Germany are using RNAi (RNA interference) to kill-off this beetle. First, the scientists found a gene that is essential to the insect; this gene codes for a "cytoskeleton protein vital to maintaining a cell's shape." Then, plants were engineered to produce a special type of RNA. When the beetle eats this plant, the plant's RNA interferes with the beetles'. In turn, the insects ribosomes are unable to read the mRNA (or messenger RNA), and code for the essential protein previously mentioned. Without that, the insect dies. 

The idea to use RNAi has been around for about a decade, however, it was unsuccessful in killing all the pests when tested years ago. This time, scientists modified the technique by inserting the plant's "instructions" for the unique RNA into their chloroplasts instead of the nucleus, which proved to work much more efficiently. This new mechanism can possibly help put a stop to crop devastation by pests in the future. The question still remaining is will the pests develop resistance to the RNAi like they have insecticides? 

I liked this article because it has brought a possible scientific solution to insects destroying crops around the world. Farmers try everything to protect their crops from being attacked by pests, but many times it makes the problem worse. For example, when an invasive insect is introduced to a crop, one possible solution is to bring a predator of that insect to the crop, too. This strategy can go very bad, very fast. If this new technique works, it could be revolutionary for farmers and consumers everywhere. 


No comments:

Post a Comment