CAREER: Abiotic degradation of emerging RNA interference pesticides

现代农业采用各种工具来增加粮食产量，以满足世界人口日益增长的需求。这导致对高效和有效的肥料和农药的需求日益增加。越来越多的生物技术创新正在满足这些需求。然而，生物技术的采用在确保农业实践的安全性和可持续性方面带来了新的挑战。本CAREER项目的目标是评估使用双链RNA （dsRNA）作为其活性剂的新兴农药的关键降解过程，这些降解过程决定了它们的环境命运。这将通过一个综合研究项目来实现，以确定在环境中降解dsRNA农药的具体过程。这项研究的成功完成将使dsRNA农药的安全、可持续和有效使用同时支持美国的农业实践，并最大限度地减少潜在的环境影响。与这一研究计划相结合的教育活动将培训环境工程师，使他们能够应对因农业和其他部门使用的合成生物技术产品的快速和持续发展而出现的新挑战。STEM劳动力的增加和科学素养的提高将带来社会效益。本项目的目标是阐明dsRNA农药在土壤、地表水和叶片表面的非生物降解途径。这一目标将通过(1)阐明在环境相关条件下发生的水解、变性、脱纯化和光降解的潜在非生物机制来实现；(2)开发和应用以产品为导向的新方法，以区分复杂环境介质中特定机制的dsRNA降解；(3)确定dsRNA农药的分子特征和配方对其降解的影响。通过定义控制dsRNA农药降解的过程，该项目推进了包括微生物遗传标记在内的核酸的环境命运和持久性的基础知识。这些研究活动与促进环境工程原理应用于dsRNA农药和其他生物技术产品风险评估的教育计划相结合。教育计划的具体目标是：(1)通过研究和基于项目的学习，培养环境工程专业的学生为新兴产品的风险评估做出贡献；(2)通过研究生主导的系列研讨会，促进生物技术安全的多学科讨论；(3)通过可扩展的高中推广计划，支持参与农业生物技术的安全和可持续应用。本文提出的综合研究和教育活动将定位环境工程领域，以应对生物技术产品快速和持续发展所带来的新的多学科挑战。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Modern agriculture employs a variety of tools to increase food production to meet the growing demands of the world’s population. This has resulted in increasing need for efficient and effective fertilizers and pesticides. Increasingly, innovations in biotechnology are being made to address these needs. However, the adoption of biotechnology leads to new challenges in ensuring the safety and sustainability of agricultural practices. The goal of this CAREER project is to assess key degradation processes that determine the environmental fate of emerging pesticides that use double-stranded RNA (dsRNA) as their active agent. This will be achieved through an integrated research program to identify specific processes that degrade dsRNA pesticides in the environment. Successful completion of this research will enable the safe, sustainable, and effective use of dsRNA pesticides to simultaneously support U.S. agricultural practices and minimize potential environmental impacts. Educational activities integrated with this research plan will train environmental engineers to address emerging challenges that arise from the rapid and ongoing development of synthetic biotechnology products for use in agriculture and other sectors. Societal benefits will result from an increased STEM workforce and greater scientific literacy.The goal of this CAREER project is to elucidate the abiotic degradation pathways for dsRNA pesticides in soils, in surface water, and on leaf surfaces. This goal will be achieved by (1) elucidating underlying abiotic mechanisms of hydrolysis, denaturation, depurination, and photodegradation that occur under environmentally relevant conditions; (2) developing and applying novel product-oriented methods to distinguish dsRNA degradation by specific mechanisms in complex environmental media; and (3) determining the impact of molecular features and formulations of dsRNA pesticides on their degradation. By defining processes that control the degradation of dsRNA pesticides, this project advances fundamental knowledge on the environmental fate and persistence of nucleic acids, including microbial genetic markers. These research activities are integrated with an education program promoting the application of environmental engineering principles to the risk assessment of dsRNA pesticides and other biotechnology products. The specific objectives of the education program are (1) to train Environmental Engineering students to contribute to risk assessment of emerging products through research and project-based learning; (2) to promote multidisciplinary discourse on biotechnology safety through a graduate student-led seminar series; and (3) to support engagement in safe and sustainable applications of agricultural biotechnology through a scalable high school outreach program. The integrated research and educational activities proposed herein will position the environmental engineering field to address new multidisciplinary challenges arising from the rapid and ongoing development of biotechnology products.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.