RNAi-Mediated Knockdown of and Genes Impair Male Fertility in

Overview

Journal Insects

Specialty Biology

Date 2019 Jun 13

PMID 31185651

Citations 6

Authors

Summar Sohail

Kaleem Tariq

Weiwei Zheng

Muhammad Waqar Ali

Wei Peng

Muhammad Fahim Raza

Hongyu Zhang

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

The genetic-based sterile insect technique (SIT) is an effective and environmentally safe strategy to diminish populations of agricultural and horticultural insect pests. Functional characterization of genes related to male fertility can enhance the genetic-based SIT. has been involved to control male fertility in both mammals and insects. Moreover, has also been revealed to influence male fertility in both human and mammals. These findings suggested that and identified from could be required for male fertility in . In this study, expression profiles of these two genes were studied at different developmental stages and in various tissues of adult males. Remarkably, it was found that and were highly expressed in the testis of mature adult males of . Furthermore, and genes were downregulated by using the RNA interference (RNAi) method. Fertility assays including egg laying, hatching, and spermatozoa count were also performed to investigate male fertility of . Results showed that knockdown of and caused male sterility up to 58.99% and 64.49%, respectively. As expected, the total numbers of spermatozoa were also significantly reduced by 65.83% and 73.9%, respectively. These results suggested that male sterility was happened wing to the low number of spermatozoa. In conclusion, we demonstrate that and are the novel agents that could be used to enhance the genetic-based SIT, or their double-stranded RNA (dsRNA) can be used as biopesticides to control the population of .

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