FIGURE 1.

Exogenous dsRNA stability and silencing signal spread in herbivorous insects. (A) Outline of diet feeding experiment. WCR, CPB, CEW, or FAW larvae were fed for 24 h on diet supplemented with of 40, 60, or 100 bp dsRNA of “neutral” sequence at 100 ng/cm², followed by Northern blot analysis of whole larvae or dissected gut and carcass tissues. (UTC) Untreated (non-dsRNA) control; (M) molecular weight markers. (B) qPCR analysis of WCR Snf7 gene (DvSnf7) expression in WCR larvae fed on the 40, 60, and 100 bp size series of long dsRNA with an embedded 27 nt fragment of DvSnf7. Three larvae were pooled for each of the three replicates. Relative expression and standard deviation are shown.