Plants can be engineered to contain molecules that disrupt insect genes, fending off a superpest that is resistant to all major insecticides.
Ralph Bock of the Max Planck Institute for Plant Physiology in Potsdam, Germany, and his colleagues engineered tobacco and potato plants so that their chloroplasts (the cell's photosynthetic structures) expressed RNA molecules that target vital insect genes. Larvae of the superpest Colorado potato beetle (Leptinotarsa decemlineata; pictured) died after nibbling leaves from the transgenic potatoes. By contrast, potatoes expressing the RNAs outside chloroplasts were not protected — probably because the plant's internal defence mechanism stopped the RNAs from accumulating to sufficient levels.
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Beetles felled by potato RNA. Nature 519, 9 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1038/519009c
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/519009c
