Abstract
The gap gene hunchback (hb) is a key regulator in the anteroposterior patterning of insects. Loss-of-function of hb resulted in segmentation defects in the next generation. In this paper, hb expression level was investigated at different developmental stages of the pea aphid, Acyrthosiphon pisum (Ap). Aphb mRNA was most early detected at the first instar stage and showed an incontinuous increase in the whole life cycle. Ingested RNA interference was performed at the second instar stage to knockdown the Aphb expression. Continuous feeding of Aphb double-stranded RNA mixed in artificial diet led to reduction of Aphb transcripts and rise of insect lethality. These results indicated that hunchback was a good RNAi target in the management of insect pests.
Highlights
Aphids, which are considered as one of the main animal pests in agriculture, feed exclusively on plant phloem sap by inserting the needle-shaped mouthparts into sieve elements
Our finding showed that the Aphb knockdown mediated by double-stranded RNA (dsRNA) ingestion was lethal to the pea aphid
This work is the first report on RNA interference (RNAi) mediated by dsRNA ingestion in pea aphid
Summary
Aphids, which are considered as one of the main animal pests in agriculture, feed exclusively on plant phloem sap by inserting the needle-shaped mouthparts into sieve elements. DsRNA-mediated RNAi has emerged as one of the most promising tool to study gene function and exhibited tremendous application potential in bio-control of insect pests [2,3]. Because the exact amount of up-take dsRNA can be monitored, so far, microinjection has been extensively used in quite a few insect species such as Cecropia, Acyrthosiphon pisum, Nilaparvata lugens, Phyllotreta striolata, etc. In these insects, RNAi have been developed for various genes encoding calreticulin, cathepsin-B, cathepsin-L, hemolin, odorant receptor [2,5,6,7]
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