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

化学农药在农业中的应用是造成环境污染、破坏野生动物和将已知致癌物引入人类食物链的重要原因之一。加拿大目前使用了937吨杀虫剂，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，开发替代的、环境友好的虫害防治方法势在必行。在我们的应用中，我们提出利用自然产生的RNA干扰机制作为害虫控制的一种方法来开发新型的遗传防治害虫。我们正在将我们之前对模式害虫蜘蛛叶螨的基因组学工作与模式植物拟南芥的遗传学和基因组学相结合，以设计出通过阻断蜘蛛蠕虫中的独特基因来终止害虫发展的植物。利用这种方法，结合精心设计的环境测试，我们建议开发一种新的基于无毒分子的虫害防治方法，这种分子将来可以转移到农作物上。这种方法有可能减少环境污染，并导致健康食品的生产。

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.