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Rnai Targeting Of Manduca Sexta Using Chloroplast-Encoded Long Dsrna, William Burke

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Pest management strategies are crucial for reducing insect crop damage, and methods with species-specific effect are particularly desirable. Expressing dsRNA with sequence complementarity to a vital gene of feeding pests is a strategy that has shown potential. I modified the chloroplast genome of cultivated tobacco, Nicotiana tabacum, by adding a sequence encoding a 2222 base pair dsRNA complementary to the vacuolar-type H⁺-ATPase subunit A mRNA of Manduca sexta and demonstrated expression of the product in leaves of the plants. Although feeding this same dsRNA that was synthesized in vitro to larvae knocked down expression of the target …