Most agricultural crops are at risk from detrimental sucking insects, including aphids. Aphids harbor not only nutritional obligate endosymbionts but also plant pathogens they transmit, expanding their damages to the host plant. In my project, I aim to characterize factors, including resistance genes, regulatory RNAs, and metabolites that involved in plant-aphid interactions and aphid-microbe symbiosis using genomic approaches followed by functional assays. Following identification, RNA interference and/or CRISPR will be attempted to develop dsRNAs or gene-edit crops for application to control aphid populations.
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