Silencing of juvenile hormone diol kinase gene induces moulting difficulties in Spodoptera litura (F)

Juvenile hormone diol kinase is an important regulatory enzyme that catalyses the phosphorylation of JH diol compound into JH diol phosphate. In the present study, a JHDK complementary DNA (cDNA) was cloned from Spodoptera litura (F) and provisionally named as Sljhdk1. Initially, the Sljhdk1 was characterized based on their stage-specific expression patterns and then the Sljhdk1 gene was suppressed through RNAi. RNAi was induced by feeding double-stranded RNA (dsRNA) to the 3^rd instar larva of S. litura. The dsRNA was designed to target the specific regions of the Sljhdk1 gene sequence. Ingestion of 1μg of dsRNA by each 3^rd instar larva successfully knocked down the target gene expression. Notable phenotypic aberration was observed along with deformed pupa and reduced pupal size. These findings ascertain the important regulatory roles of Sljhdk1 in S. litura.