Revision as of 13:46, 2 October 2018

A Battle against the Beetle

Phyllotreta striolata is the most destructive insects worldwide.

However, the present insect control strategies have certain limitations.

We aim to develop a RNAi-based topical application approach.

Ingestion of the sprayed siRNAs or shRNAs by P. striolata will induce the RNA silencing mechanism in the P. striolata and lead to its death.

So far, we have designed the siRNAs for synthesis based on the sequences of the genes that are important for the development and survival of P. striolata.

Currently we are rearing P. striolata to obtain enough the same age insects for feeding bioassays and gene silencing investigation.

We will design corresponding small hairpin RNAs (shRNAs) and use E. coli expression system, or in vitro transcription system to produce these shRNAs in large scale.