β-tubulin functions in spermatogenesis in Lygus hesperus Knight

Lygus hesperus Knight is an important insect pest of crops across western North America, with field management heavily reliant on the use of chemical insecticides. Because of the evolution of resistance to these insecticides, effective and environmentally benign pest management strategies are needed. Traditional sterile insect technique (SIT) has been successfully employed to manage or eradicate some insect pests but involves introducing irradiated insects with random mutations into field populations. New genetically-driven SIT techniques are a safer alternative, causing fixed mutations that manipulate individual genes in target pests to produce sterile individuals for release. Here, we identified seven β-tubulin coding genes from L. hesperus and show that Lhβtub2 is critical in male sperm production and fertility. Lhβtub2 is expressed primarily in the male testes and targeting of this gene by RNA interference or gene editing leads to male sterility.