Parental RNAi In Locusta Migratoria Manilensis And Hunchback Functions In Segment Patterning Revealed By Parental RNAi

The migratory locust, Locusta migratoria L., is widely distributed throughout Africa, Europe, Asia and Australia. Among them, Locusta migratoria manilensis (Meyen) is a widespread agriculture pest in China with a comparatively broad geographic distribution that includes both temperate and tropical climatic zones. These species are capable of quickly inflicting severe damage to agricultural production in areas where they persist and they can migrate to other areas and cause further damage. The locust plagues have been a historical problem in China and worldwide. Such outbreaks have become more and more frequent in China during the past decade because of inadequate prevention and control techniques as well as environmental changes, such as warmer winters, droughts and chemical insecticide abuse. Therefore, the Chinese government pays highly attention to the preventative actions of the locust plagues. Furthermore, Locusta migratoria serves also as powerful model system in neurosciences, development and evolution. Recently, studies of the cell and molecular biology of locust have become most important fields and a lot of genes have been cloned. The development of methods facilitating molecular manipulation of these primitive insects is thus of wide interest. However, until now successful approaches for a specific interference with gene expression have not been reported.Here we report results from investigating the feasibility of the parental RNAi pathway in L. migratoria manilensis and the hunchback functions in segment patterning of Locusta migratoria manilensis revealed by parental RNAi.â‘ Cloning and sequence analysis of L. migratoria manilensis hunchbackThe L. migratoria manilensis hunchback (Lmm'hb) cDNA is 3774 bp long and contains a unique open reading frame (ORF) spanning nucleotides 5-2545. The polypeptide deduced from the ORF comprises 846 amino acids, with a calculated molecular mass of 92.09 kDa. The predicted protein contains eight zinc fingers, two in the N-terminal (NF1-2), four in the middle (MF1-4), and two in the C-terminal region of the peptide (CF1-2). In addition, there are other conserved domains, the A box, Basic box and C box. The MF1-4 and CF1-2 are highly conserved in all insects, but the N-terminal zinc fingers are the most divergent.â‘¡Parental RNAi of L. migratoria manilensis hunchbackDsRNA of Lmm'hb was injected into adult virgin female's body cavity. All...