Abstract:

Micro-needle technology， as an advanced minimally invasive drug delivery platform， has been extensively applied in biomedical research for the transdermal delivery of pharmaceuticals， vaccines， and biological macromolecules. In recent years， modern molecular techniques represented by clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats/CRISPR-associated protein 9 （CRISPR/Cas9） gene editing and RNA interference （RNAi） have provided revolutionary tools for the research on green prevention and control of agricultural pests. Conventional microinjection methods are cumbersome to operate， low in throughput， and prone to cause damage to insect eggs； while the feeding method is limited by multiple physiological and enzymatic degradation barriers in the insect digestive tract， resulting in difficulty in effective uptake of exogenous dsRNA into the blood circulation， with low and unstable delivery efficiency. In view of this， introducing the mature micro-needle technology （whose core is a micron-scale needle tip array） from the medical field into insect molecular research provides an innovative idea to solve this delivery dilemma. This review systematically explored the application potential of micro-needle technology in insect molecular delivery for the first time， focused on elaborating the types of micro-needles suitable for insect systems， key biocompatible materials and their properties， and deeply analyzed the main opportunities and challenges faced by this interdisciplinary application. The purpose is to provide a new technical perspective and theoretical reference for the development of the next generation of efficient and precise molecular pest control strategies.

Key words: micro-needle technology, insect, nucleic acid delivery, pest management, biomaterials