Open AccessTransgenic micro RNA ‐14 rice shows high resistance to rice stem borer
Author(s) -
He Kang,
Xiao Huamei,
Sun Yang,
Ding Simin,
Situ Gongming,
Li Fei
Publication year - 2019
Publication title -
plant biotechnology journal
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 3.525
H-Index - 115
eISSN - 1467-7652
pISSN - 1467-7644
DOI - 10.1111/pbi.12990
Subject(s) - chilo suppressalis , biology , rna interference , ecdysone receptor , pest analysis , genetically modified rice , transgene , gene , instar , rna , genetically modified crops , rna silencing , insect , microbiology and biotechnology , bioassay , larva , toxicology , genetics , botany , transcription factor , nuclear receptor
Summary Rice stem borer ( RSB , Chilo suppressalis ) is an insect pest that causes huge economic losses every year. Control efforts rely heavily on chemical insecticides, which leads to serious problems such as insecticide resistance, environment pollution, and food safety issues. Therefore, developing alternative pest control methods is an important task. Here, we identified an insect‐specific micro RNA , miR‐14, in RSB , which was predicted to target Spook ( Spo ) and Ecdysone receptor ( EcR ) in the ecdysone signalling network. In‐vitro dual luciferase assays using HEK 293T cells confirmed the interactions of Csu‐miR‐14 with CsSpo and with CsEcR . Csu‐miR‐14 exhibited high levels of expression at the end of each larval instar stage, and its expression was negatively correlated with the expression of its two target genes. Overexpression of Csu‐miR‐14 at the third day of the fifth instar stage led to high mortality and developmental defects in RSB individuals. We produced 35 rice transformants to express miR‐14 and found that three lines had a single copy with highly abundant miR‐14 mature transcripts. Feeding bioassays using both T 0 and T 1 generations of transgenic miR‐14 rice indicated that at least one line (C#24) showed high resistance to RSB . These results indicated that the approach of mi RNA s as targets has potential for improving pest control methods. Moreover, using insect‐specific mi RNA s rather than protein‐encoding genes for pest control may prove benign to non‐insect species, and thus is worthy of further exploration.