Destructive pest moth stripped of sex appeal by gene editing

Female beet armyworms with a deleted cistron don’t nutrient enactment pheromones, which could beryllium exploited arsenic a mode to power numbers of this cultivation pest

Life 11 December 2021

By Gary Hartley

The beet armyworm is simply a destructive harvest pest

Nigel Cattlin / naturepl.com

Deleting a cistron linked to the accumulation of enactment pheromones successful the beet armyworm (Spodoptera exigua) causes females to suffer their attractiveness to males, offering a caller imaginable way to power the species, considered 1 of the world’s worst cultivation pests.

Shabbir Ahmed astatine Andong National University successful South Korea and his colleagues utilized the CRISPR genome-editing technology to delete the cistron SexiDES5 successful caterpillars of the moth, which provender connected a wide scope of crops specified arsenic vegetables, fabric and flowers. …