Taking Out the Bodyguards: A New Solution to Agricultural Disease

David Hughes of the Pennsylvania State University in the U.S. will produce plants expressing RNAi designed to sterilize ant queens. The strategy will use aphids to deliver the RNAi to the ants: the phloem-sucking aphids take up the RNAi and pass it along to ants in their honeydew. The goal is to reduce populations of ants that act as bodyguards to the aphids, thereby increasing aphid mortality.