ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Plant Sci.
Sec. Plant Biotechnology
This article is part of the Research TopicHarnessing the Power of Small RNAs: Advances and Applications in Plant Gene Silencing and Stress ResponseView all articles
Using transcriptome analysis to evaluate the impact of dsAllim cotton on non-target organism O. similis
Provisionally accepted
Changyan Li1*
HAIQIN YAO2
Kunwei Hua3Danyang Cao3Hang Zhang3
Yin Desuo1
Xiaolian Zhang4Feng Wang4
Weihua Ma3Lizhen Chen3*Aiqing You1*- 1Food Crops Institute, Hubei Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Wuhan, China
- 2Wuhan Business University, Wuhan, China
- 3Huazhong Agricultural University, Wuhan, China
- 4Guizhou Tobacco Science Research Institute, Guiyang, China
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The application of genetically engineered (GE) crops in pest management raises biosafety concerns of governments, the scientific community and the public, especially with the emergence of RNA interference (RNAi)-based crops expressing insecticidal double-stranded (ds)RNA. These crops may pose challenges to public health, agriculture, and conservation, and they may also present risks to non-target organisms, including beneficial natural enemies of pests. Natural enemies of insects constitute a significant component of global biodiversity and play a crucial role in the management of insect pests within agroecosystems. Herein, we combined biological and bioinformatic approaches and adopted both the food-chain delivery and animal-feeding systems to comprehensively evaluate the potential unintended effects of exogenous insecticidal dsRNA expressed by an insect-resistant transgenic dsAllim cotton, on the biological parameters and transcriptome of the cotton-field predatory natural enemy, Orius similis. Results showed that the dsAllim cotton had no adverse effects on O. similis, indicating its potential safety for non-target beneficial insects. These findings support the use of dsAllim cotton as a reference in developing regulatory frameworks for the risk assessment of RNAi crops. Our study demonstrated that dsAllim cotton did not affect O. similis at either the developmental or transcriptomic levels. Together with previous research, our results underscore the importance of conducting RNAi crop safety evaluations for non-target organisms (NTOs) on a case-by-case basis, with particular attention to potential off-target effects.
Keywords: biosafety, double-stranded RNA, Genetically modified crop, natural enemy, transcriptomic entropy
Received: 08 Oct 2025; Accepted: 04 Dec 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Li, YAO, Hua, Cao, Zhang, Desuo, Zhang, Wang, Ma, Chen and You. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
Changyan Li
Lizhen Chen
Aiqing You
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