Genetic pest control: plant-generated RNAi gene knockouts in agricultural pest

化学农药在农业上的应用是造成环境污染、野生动物破坏和已知致癌物进入人类食物链的重要原因之一。目前，加拿大使用了937吨农药，相当于每公顷49.8公斤。尽管杀虫剂本身的成本为13亿美元，但估计环境和社会成本超过40亿美元。因此，必须开发替代的、环境友好的虫害控制方法。在我们的申请中，我们提出使用天然存在的RNA干扰机制作为害虫控制的方法来开发新的遗传害虫控制。我们正在将我们以前对模式害虫二斑叶螨的基因组工作与模式植物拟南芥的遗传学和基因组学相结合，以设计通过阻断蜘蛛螨中的独特基因来终止害虫发育的植物。使用这种方法结合精心设计的环境测试，我们建议开发一种新的害虫控制方法的基础上无毒分子，可以在未来转移到农作物。这种方法有可能减少环境污染，从而生产健康食品。

Application of chemical pesticides in agriculture represents one of crucial causes of environmental pollution, destruction of wildlife and introduction of known carcinogens in human food chain. Currently in Canada 937 tons of pesticides are applied, which amounts to 49.8 kg per hectare. Even though the cost of pesticides itself is $1.3 billions, estimated environmental and societal cost exceeds $4 billions. Thus, it is imperative to develop alternative, environmentally friendly, pest control approaches. In our application we propose to develop novel genetic pest control using naturally occurring RNA interference mechanism as a method for the pest control. We are combining our previous genomic work on model pest species spider mite Tetranychus urticae with genetics and genomics of model plant Arabidopsis to engineer plants that will terminate pest development by blocking unique genes in spider mite. Using this approach in combination with carefully designed environmental tests we propose to develop a novel pest control method based on non-toxic molecules that could be in future transferred to agricultural crops. This approach has a potential to reduce environmental pollution and result in production of healthy food.