Silencing the gustatory receptor BtGR11 affects the sensing of sucrose in the whitefly Bemisia tabaci

Fengqi Li; Zhongjuan Di; Jiahui Tian; Youssef Dewer; Cheng Qu; Shiyong Yang; Chen Luo

doi:10.3389/fbioe.2022.1054943

Silencing the gustatory receptor BtGR11 affects the sensing of sucrose in the whitefly Bemisia tabaci

Front Bioeng Biotechnol. 2022 Nov 14:10:1054943. doi: 10.3389/fbioe.2022.1054943. eCollection 2022.

Authors

Fengqi Li¹, Zhongjuan Di^{1

2}, Jiahui Tian^{1

3}, Youssef Dewer⁴, Cheng Qu¹, Shiyong Yang³, Chen Luo¹

Affiliations

¹ Beijing Key Laboratory of Environment Friendly Management on Fruit Diseases and Pests in North China, Institute of Plant Protection, Beijing Academy of Agriculture and Forestry Sciences, Beijing, China.
² Key Laboratory of Chemical Biology and Molecular Engineering of Ministry of Education, Institute of Biotechnology, Shanxi University, Taiyuan, China.
³ School of Ecology and Environment, Anhui Normal University, Wuhu, China.
⁴ Phytotoxicity Research Department, Central Agricultural Pesticide Laboratory, Agricultural Research Center, Giza, Egypt.

Abstract

RNA interference (RNAi) is powerful biotechnology for studying the in vivo functions of key genes. Based on this property, RNAi can also be used for pest control as an effective alternative to chemical pesticides. The management of phloem-sucking pests is a tricky issue in current agricultural and forestry pest control. RNAi can silence key chemoreceptor genes of phloem-sucking pests; thereby regulating the behavior of these pests can be manipulated. So, it is considered to be a promising new type of ecological pest management strategy. In this study, we identified a candidate taste receptor gene, BtGR11, that controls the taste sensitivity to sucrose in the whitefly Bemisia tabaci, which is a serious invasive phloem-sucking pest worldwide. Functional analyses using the Xenopus oocyte expression system and the two-electrode voltage-clamp system revealed that the oocytes expressing BtGR11 responded to sucrose. Furthermore, we found that silencing BtGR11 by RNAi inhibited the function of sensing sucrose in the whitefly. This study reports a key chemoreceptor gene that can be used for the understanding of the gustatory sensing mechanisms of whitefly to deterrent.

Keywords: RNAi; behavioral regulation; phloem-sucking pests; sucrose; sugar receptor.