Cotton Bollworm With Impaired Tolerance to Gossypol

Cotton produces the chemical gossypol to resist and evade herbivore attacks. Several insects however, especially the cotton bollworm, can metabolize the toxic phytochemical. Scientists from the Chinese Academy of Science used RNA interference (RNAi) to understand how the cotton bollworm resists gossypol. The group identified the cytochrome P450 gene, CYP6AE14, to be responsible for the resistance. The gene is highly expressed in the midgut which is the detoxification and digestion center of the larva. Its expression was also found to increase  with larval growth when gossypol is included in the diet. The discovery made by the group presents a new strategy for suppressing cotton bollworm attack. Cotton plants can be engineered to produce dsRNA with nucleotide sequences complementary to CYP6AE14. This approach may prove to be useful as a counter measure for cotton bollworm resistance to insecticide and other transgenic crop varieties.

Read the abstract at http://www.nature.com/nbt/journal/v25/n11/abs/nbt1352.html or the full paper at http://www.nature.com/nbt/journal/v25/n11/pdf/nbt1352.pdf