Recipient Organization
AGRICULTURAL RESEARCH SERVICE
(N/A)
COLLEGE STATION,TX 77845
Performing Department
(N/A)
Non Technical Summary
(N/A)
Animal Health Component
33%
Research Effort Categories
Basic
33%
Applied
33%
Developmental
34%
Goals / Objectives
Functionally test candidate genes involved in boll weevil pheromone production and identify genes that may be important for boll weevil diapause.
Project Methods
Previously, we assembled and annotated a boll weevil transcriptome to be used as a public resource for current and future studies. We applied the new transcriptome to identify genes that are likely involved in pheromone production. We will continue this work by developing doublestranded RNA (dsRNA) to target the top 10 genes involved in pheromone production. A group of male boll weevils will be injected with dsRNA, another group will be fed dsRNA, and a third group will receive no dsRNA (control). All weevils will be fed a fresh square daily and pheromone production will be assessed via GC-MS after 10 days of feeding. Successful knockdown of the targeted genes will be verified with qPCR. In order to identify genes involved in diapause, a group of newly eclosed weevils will be held under environmental conditions and provided a boll diet known to induce diapause. At the end of the feeding period, weevils will be dissected to confirm diapause status and preserved in RNAlater until RNA can be extracted. Weevils considered to be in diapause will be held separately from those not in diapause. RNA will be extracted from all weevils and sent to Texas A&M Agrilife Genomics and Bioinformatics Service (TxGen), where the samples will be prepared for sequencing on an Illumina NovaSeq.