Abstract

RNA interference (RNAi) is a natural mechanism found in most eukaryotes with great potential to be used in agricultural pest control. It is based primarily on gene silencing caused by double-stranded RNA (dsRNA) molecules which are complementary to the target messenger RNA (mRNA) in a highly specific manner. The major components of RNAi involve the presence of enzymes capable of recognizing the dsRNA molecule, cut it off in smaller fragments and finally binding the generated antisense strands to the target mRNA. Several research centers, universities, and private institutions have been working on better understand its functional mechanism to apply this molecular approach in insect pest control. As advantage, RNAi is considered a high specificity tool able to affect only the target organisms, unlike the broad-spectrum chemical methods generally applied in the field. Furthermore, reports in literature have proved RNAi is potentially efficient to cause insect mortality for many insect orders. Taking this into account, our mini-review aims to provide some basic information on this subject and demonstrate the feasibility of applying RNAi as a molecular approach for controlling insect pests.

Keywords: RNAi; dsRNA; Gene silencing; Insect mortality; Pest control; Dicer; RISC