## 3 Discussion  
Insects are a dense source of dietary nutrients [57; 58]. Research demonstrates other health benefits of consuming insects including biomarkers for improved gut health in humans [59]. Zoonotic diseases, such as viruses, are much less likely to jump from farm-raised insects to humans than from mammals or bird livestock due to large genetic differences between humans and arthropods [23; 35; 60]. Additionally, studies show that foodborne pathogen loads in farmed insects, such as _Salmonella_ spp. and _Listeria monocytogenes_, are low and often absent [61; 62]. The European Union recently approved the focus species  
Figure 10: _A. domesticus_ RNAi phenotypes. (**A**) Ad vermilion gene knock-down by RNAi in house cricket. Wild type eye color (left) compared with RNAi eye color (right). (**B**) GFP knock-down by RNAi in our EGFP expressing house cricket strain, AdVELV1-3. Regular EGFP expression (left) compared with dsEGFP RNAi cricket (right).  
\begin{table}
\begin{tabular}{c c c c c c} \hline \hline
**Name** & **Injected** & **Survival \({}^{*}\)** & **Survival Rate** & **KD** & **KD Rate** \\ \hline dsAdV-WT \#1 & 19 & 16 & 84\% & 13 & 81\% \\ \hline dsAdV-WT \#2 & 19 & 17 & 89\% & 13 & 76\% \\ \hline dsAdV-WT \#3 & 20 & 10 & 50\% & 8 & 80\% \\ \hline dsEGFP-WT \#1 & 25 & 13 & 52\% & 0 & 0\% \\ \hline dsEGFP-WT \#2 & 18 & 9 & 50\% & 0 & 0\% \\ \hline dsEGFP-AdVELV1-3 \#1 & 20 & 12 & 60\% & 12 & 100\% \\ \hline dsEGFP-AdVELV1-3 \#2 & 20 & 17 & 85\% & 15 & 88\% \\ \hline dsEGFP-AdVELV1-3 \#2 & 17 & 9 & 53\% & 9 & 100\% \\ \hline \hline \end{tabular} \({}^{*}\)Survival rate is count at four weeks post microinjection.  
\end{table}
Table 5: RNAi results in _A. domesticus_.  
of this paper, _A. domesticus_, as well as _Tenebrio molitor_ (yellow mealworm) as a safe novel food [63].  
Given the excellent nutritional value of insects and their ability to be grown efficiently in small and confined spaces with minimal resource inputs, they will be a critically important solution for sustainable food/protein production [23; 24; 64; 32; 65]. Entomophagy, consumption of insects as food, is accepted and practiced by over 2 billion people worldwide [34; 66; 67]. Some attractive features offered by insects include low land, water, and natural resource utilization [64], reduced greenhouse gas emissions [65; 68], highly prolific (1500-3000 eggs per female) [64; 69; 70] and short life cycles for rapid scale-up to support food security. Insects are amenable to modularized vertical farming as well as automated and urban farming. They also can be grown closer to cities and/or processing facilities. Due to their small size and growth efficiencies, insects are likely the only animal feasible for production in space exploration, such as at stations on the moon and Mars [71; 72].  
Diversification of our food supply is critical for food security. According to the FAO, 75% of food comes from only 12 plant and 5 animal species [10; 73]. Class Insecta are the largest, most diverse group of organisms on Earth, with approximately 950,000 species described and 4-30 million estimated [16; 74; 75]. At least 2000 species have been identified as eaten around the world, and many can be farmed [23; 24; 33; 34; 67]. One of the food security benefits of the biodiversity offered by insects is the ability to rapidly switch species in response to crop loss from disease [23; 28].  
In addition to being a food source for animals and humans, crickets have also been utilized as a valuable model system for studying biological processes such as neurobiology, developmental biology, animal behavior, and others [76]. With the recent interest in industrial farming crickets for human consumption, even greater potential exists for studying these creatures via expanded access to all life stages from farms, as well as the potential impact of research on cricket biology and genetics.