Scavenger receptor-mediated endocytosis facilitates RNA interference in the desert locust, Schistocerca gregaria

RNA interference (RNAi) has become a widely used loss-of-function tool in eukaryotes; however, the delivery of double-stranded (ds)RNA) to the target cells remains a major challenge when exploiting the RNAi-technology. In insects, the efficiency of RNAi is highly species-dependent. Yet, the mechanism of cell entry in insects has only been characterized in a cell line of the fruit fly, Drosophila melanogaster, a species that is well known to be poorly amenable to environmental RNAi. In the present paper, we demonstrate that silencing vacuolar H-ATPase 16 (vha16) and clathrin heavy chain (clath), two components of the Clathrin-dependent endocytosis pathway, together with pharmacological inhibition of scavenger receptors with polyinosine and dextran sulphate, can significantly attenuate the highly robust RNAi response in the desert locust, Schistocerca gregaria.