Table 2.

Silencing efficiency of Eph in M. persicae guts using different RNAi-based methods.

	Aphid Feeding Source	Exp.	Plant or RNA Concentration	AAP b	Relative Fold Change Eph-mRNA in M. persicae Guts c
A	Transgenic A. thaliana expressing Hp-Eph a	1	Ara:Hp-Eph (T3) Ara:Hp-Eph (T4)	7 d	0.126 ± 0.021 (−87.4%) *
		2			0.928 ± 0.062 (−7.8%)
B	N. benthamiana transiently expressing Hp-Eph	1	Bentha:Hp-Eph	10 d	1.038 ± 0.037 (+3.8%)
C	N. benthamiana infected with TRV-Eph	1	Bentha:TRV-Eph	7 d	0.812 ± 0.013 (−18.8%) *
		2			0.441 ± 0.037 (−55.9%) *
D	siRNA purified from N. benthamiana transiently expressing Hp-Eph	1	siRNA 100 ng/µL	72 h	unstable reference gene d
E	In vitro-synthesized dsRNA-Eph	1	dsRNA 200 ng/µL	72 h	0.470 ± 0.021 (−53.0%) *
		2	dsRNA 400 ng/µL		0.153 ± 0.015 (−84.7%) *

^a In brackets: A. thaliana T3 or T4 progeny; ^b Acquisition Access Period; ^c Relative fold change of Eph-mRNA accumulation ± standard deviation of triplicates. In brackets the level of expression compared to aphids fed on control conditions (A. thaliana constitutively expressing dsRNA targeting lacZ, N. benthamiana transiently expressing dsRNA targeting lacZ, N. benthamiana infected with a recombinant TRV-LacZ, in vitro synthesized dsRNA-LacZ). Each result corresponds to one pool of 100 aphid guts. In bold, the samples of aphids in which silencing of Eph was observed. In grey, samples in which Eph-mRNA was reduced by more than 25%; ^d unstable reference genes: Rpl7 and L27 genes were not expressed at the same level in aphids being subjected to different treatments; * indicates significant differences between aphids fed on LacZ control and aphids that have acquired silencing molecules targeting Eph (Student’s t-test, p < 0.05).