* 10 November 2007

    * Andy Coghlan

    * Magazine issue 2629

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 dsRNA it ingests shuts down some of its genes, killing it.

This week, two teams announced that they have independently created crops that act in this way. One team in China primed plants to make dsRNA that kills the larvae of the cotton bollworm moth, which cause $1 billion of ...

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