TARGETING THE VACUOLAR ATPase SUBUNITS B AND C IN PINK BOLLWORM, Pectinophora gossypiella (Saunders) (Lepidoptera; Gelechiidae)

The vacuolar proton pump, V-ATPase, is located in the apical cell membranes of the goblet cells within the midgut of lepidopteran larvae. It plays a role in amino acid absorption, by energiz-ing the plasma membrane through pump-ing H+ ions/proton into the goblet lumen. The full transcripts of V-ATPase subunit B and C were sequenced from the midgut of pink bollworm larvae. We used RNAi to determine the efficacy of dsRNA on silencing genes encoding B and C subu-nits. Larval injection with dsRNAs target-ing subunits B and C caused larval mortal-ity of 30.77% and 25.68%, respectively.