RNA interference: the soultion to agricultural pests

My 4th entry on my series I started a while back on beetles, sadly this post will not be about beetles. I couldn't find any new articles that had any substantial info on beetles, but thankfully this post will have the beetle appear as a cameo to the main theme of the post. Insect pests have long posed as a serious issue to farmers around the world who cultivate the crops that we eat for food on a daily basis. They have been trying to find solutions to eradicate the insects that are a great nuisance to crop yield and while some methods have been successful, most of the time the solutions have a minimal impact on the short term. For the long term, the usage of insecticides and pesticides are simply incapable of removing the bug problem because much like bacteria and other organisms, insects eventually develop an immunity to a toxic chemical that would normally kill them. Natural selection has a way to select those insects that are able to withstand certain pesticides and then these insects reproduce more often and withstand the chemicals that are meant to remove them.

There is however, a solution that scientists have recently uncovered after years of careful research that could potentially revolutionize agriculture as we know it. According to Vlad Zhurov, a research associate in Western’s biology department and a member of the Genomics in Agricultural Pest Management team led by Western biologist Miodrag Grbic., there is a way to select certain genes artificially by finding out the needed gene sequence that specifically targets the pest and their eating habits. This breakthrough in genetics was accomplished back in 2006, but only recently scientists have been testing and improving upon the research of RNA interference. The process is complicated and more information can be uncovered, but the process involves the insertion of double-stranded RNA into the plants that the pests consume and once the RNA enters the body of the pest, it interferes with critical growth and development of certain proteins. This enables scientists to specifically target certain genes that they want to remove from the pests which could essentially weaken their populations to the point that they may not be a threat to farmers' crops in the future. Scientists who have been using RNA interference as a new technology have begun to test this on  the red flour beetle, and while it has not been proven to be very successful as not all the cells get affected, there is great research to be done that could finally solve the insect pest crisis. Perhaps one day there will be a sequence of double-stranded RNA that could stop the Japanese beetles (picture above) from their constant attacks on plants all across the world (and especially in Minnesota)!

NOS Themes:
Science is collaborative: With the work of numerous scientists and the contributions of many countries in the Genomics in Agricultural Pest Management project, results were discovered!

Science is based on evidence: With lots of tests and applications, RNA interference needed to be backed up by evidence that it actually works, and years of research can prove that.

Importance of repeatability: It is absolutely crucial that the process of RNA interference can be repeatable in various plants and organisms in which it is tested in, or else it's useless.
http://www.producer.com/2013/05/genetic-science-revolution-offers-precise-solutions-to-agricultural-challenges/