Beetle RNA makes crops a noxious meal
Insects shun potato plants laced with the pests’ own genetic material
To keep pests at bay, try giving them a taste of their own genes. Hungry beetles spurn crops bearing the insects’ genetic material, scientists report in the Feb. 27 Science. When pests munch the engineered plants, beetle RNA in the leaves switches off key genes in the bugs.
The Colorado potato beetle is a voracious pest that has become resistant to many chemical pesticides. To protect potato plants from its ravages, researchers transplanted fragments of beetle genes into the crops.