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Project Description

dsRNA induced gene silencing as an alternative to traditional fungicides to manage Fusarium infection in cereal crops.

Each year, Alberta applies over 10,000 metric tons of pesticide to agricultural, industrial, and domestic land. This is not only financially taxing, but it results in downstream off-target effects and bioaccumulation within the prairie ecosystem[1]. Targeted double stranded RNA (dsRNA) has been shown to be capable of activating the RNA interference machinery with a lethal effect when consumed by eukaryotic pest organisms[2][3][4]. While these results are promising, the cost of dsRNA synthesis remains prohibitively expensive and not easily tailored to each specific pest species.

Our proposed project involves the synthesis of highly pure dsRNA for use as a topical fungicide. The target of our RNAi-based approach will be a member of the genus Fusarium, responsible for the spread of Fusarium Head Blight which decimates cereal grain yields across Canada. This project will target specific Fusarium virulence factors and effectively silence them, protecting the crops from infection. Furthermore, our design involves a scaffold in which any dsRNA sequence of interest may be inserted for targeting of a gene of interest within a specific species. Altogether, this project represent a scalable, highly species-specific, and widely applicable solution to global agriculture problems that has an added bonus of being rapidly degradable in the environment (~36 hours)[5].

References:

1. Cabana, G., & Rasmussen, J. B. (1994). Modelling food chain structure and contaminant bioaccumulation using stable nitrogen isotopes. Nature, 372(6503), 255-257.
2. Drinnenberg, I. A., Weinberg, D. E., Xie, K. T., Mower, J. P., Wolfe, K. H., Fink, G. R., & Bartel, D. P. (2009). RNAi in budding yeast. Science, 326(5952), 544-550.
3. Huvenne, H., & Smagghe, G. (2010). Mechanisms of dsRNA uptake in insects and potential of RNAi for pest control: a review. Journal of insect physiology,56(3),235.
4. Palli, S.R. (2014). RNA interference in Colorado potato beetle: steps toward development of dsRNA as a commercial insecticide. Current opinion in Insect Science, 6, 1-8.
5. Dubelman S, Fischer J, Zapata F, Huizinga K, Jiang C, et al. (2014) Environmental Fate of Double-Stranded RNA in Agricultural Soils. PLoS ONE 9(3):e93155. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0093155