GENETICALLY modified plants that can kill just about any insect pest without harming beneficial insects or the environment may soon pop up in farmers’ fields.
The plants exploit a mechanism called RNA interference (RNAi), which organisms naturally use to switch genes off. To to this, the organism produces a double-stranded piece of RNA (dsRNA) whose sequence matches part of the gene to be silenced. Adding just a few of these to a cell shuts down the target gene.
The dsRNA produced by these modified plants targets genes specific to certain insect pests. When the pest feeds on the plant, the…
