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Updated: Feb 13, 2026

Larval RNA Interference in the Red Flour Beetle, Tribolium castaneum
Published on: October 13, 2014
Functional characterization of chitin deacetylase 1 gene disrupting larval-pupal transition in the drugstore beetle
Wen-Jia Yang1, Kang-Kang Xu1, Xin Yan1
1Guizhou Provincial Key Laboratory for Rare Animal and Economic Insects of the Mountainous Region, College of Biology and Environmental Engineering, Guiyang University, Guiyang 550005, China.
Abstract:
Chitin deacetylases (CDAs) are chitin degradation enzymes that strictly regulate growth and development in insects. In this study, we identified and characterized a full-length cDNA of the CDA gene (SpCDA1) in the drugstore beetle, Stegobium paniceum. The open reading frame of SpCDA1 (1614 bp) encoded a 537 amino acid protein, which possessed typical domain structures of CDAs. Phylogenetic comparison to other insect CDAs revealed that SpCDA1 belongs to Group Ib CDAs. Quantitative real-time PCR analyses showed that SpCDA1 was highly expressed in late larval stages. Significant increase of SpCDA1 transcript level in the larvae was observed upon the exposure of 20-hydroxyecdysone. Injection of double-stranded RNA (dsRNA) of SpCDA1 into the late larvae significantly reduced SpCDA1 transcript levels, resulted in larval-pupal molting difficulty and produced high larval mortality. After 15 days, the survival rate of S. paniceum in dsSpCDA1 group was significantly reduced by 72% compared to the control. The results demonstrated that SpCDA1 is essential for successful larval-pupal transition in S. paniceum and this gene may be a potential target for pest control.
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