Turning Invasive Pathogens Against Themselves by Protecting Trees with Pathogen Specific Treatments

Grants and Contracts Details

Description

We propose to establish new tools for integrated pest management of invasive insects and diseases of forest trees. Invasive diseases and insect pests impact a substantial number of tree species, causing extensive mortality and altering forest composition and structure nationally and globally. Innovative, novel management approaches are needed that can be rapidly developed for effective treatments against the diverse current and future forest diseases and insect pests. One such approach, RNA interference (RNAi), is based on manipulating the invaders’ metabolism through introduction of double stranded RNA (dsRNA) specific to the invader. This approach takes advantage of the naturally occurring cellular defense system present in most plants, insects and fungi to monitor and suppress viral infections, by targeting double stranded viral RNA for cleavage, thus suppressing viral infection. These same mechanisms have been repurposed by application of dsRNA to plants that silence pest species-specific genes essential for the growth and reproduction of the targeted invasive pest. Unlike traditional pesticides, RNAi can be rapidly developed by using the genome sequence of the targeted pest species to design species-specific dsRNAs. RNAi has been shown to be effective against a variety of fungal pathogens and insect pests in agriculture and has recently been shown to be applicable in forest trees by members of our team. We propose to develop and test RNAi-based suppression of six important test cases in forest trees: 1) chestnut blight, 2) Dutch elm disease, 3) butternut canker, 4) laurel wilt, 5) emerald ash borer and related invasive wood borers, and 6) invasive adelgid species, including the hemlock and balsam woolly adelgids. Our approach uses exogenously applied dsRNAs and is not a genetically modified organism-based approach. The portion of this larger project that we will be leading here includes development of RNAi tools and techniques for tree pathogens (insects will be addressed by a different group at UK in a separate agreement), outreach, and better understanding public opinion about RNAi.
StatusActive
Effective start/end date8/27/24 → 12/31/27

Funding

  • Forest Service: $345,000.00

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