 In 2012 Syngenta bought Belgian RNAi firm <unk> for $ 522 million and Monsanto paid $ 29 @.@ 2 million for the exclusive rights to intellectual property from <unk> Pharmaceuticals . The International Potato Center in Lima , Peru is looking for genes to target in the sweet potato weevil , a beetle whose larvae ravage sweet potatoes globally . Other researchers are trying to silence genes in ants , caterpillars and pollen beetles . Monsanto will likely be first to market , with a transgenic corn seed that expresses dsRNA based on gene Snf7 from the western corn <unk> , a beetle whose larvae annually cause one billion dollars in damage in the United States alone . A 2012 paper showed that silencing Snf7 stunts larval growth , killing them within days . In 2013 the same team showed that the RNA affects very few other species . 
