Landmark paper in honeybee genetics

[fatshark]

Transgenic bees … the title might be gibberish but this is a landmark paper in the ability of scientists to a) understand the genetics of honeybees and b) develop disease resistant bees.

It will be highly controversial (inevitably) but the same technology has truly revolutionised the biology of the Drosophila (fruit fly) and Aedes (mosquito).

Looks like the paper is behind a paywall (but some of you will know how to access it). For those who can't yet, here's the abstract:

Honeybees (Apis mellifera), which are important pollinators of plants, display remarkable individual behaviors that collectively contribute to the organization of a complex society. Advances in dissecting the complex processes of honeybee behavior have been limited in the recent past due to a lack of genetic manipulation tools. These tools are difficult to apply in honeybees because the unit of reproduction is the colony, and many interesting phenotypes are developmentally specified at later stages. Here, we report highly efficient integration and expression of piggyBac-derived cassettes in the honeybee. We demonstrate that 27 and 20% of queens stably transmitted two different expression cassettes to their offspring, which is a 6- to 30-fold increase in efficiency compared with those generally reported in other insect species. This high efficiency implies that an average beekeeping facility with a limited number of colonies can apply this tool. We demonstrated that the cassette stably and efficiently expressed marker genes in progeny under either an artificial or an endogenous promoter. This evidence of efficient expression encourages the use of this system to inhibit gene functions through RNAi in specific tissues and developmental stages by using various promoters. We also showed that the transgenic marker could be used to select transgenic offspring to be employed to facilitate the building of transgenic colonies via the haploid males. We present here the first to our knowledge genetic engineering tool that will efficiently allow for the systematic detection and better understanding of processes underlying the biology of honeybees.

and the accompanying 'significance' statement:

We report the first to our knowledge genetically engineered honeybees, which are important pollinators and interesting biological models for the study of social and complex behaviors as well as caste and sexual development. This genetic manipulation tool will enable systematic studies of biological processes in an organism building complex societies. We demonstrate highly efficient integration and expression of piggyBac-derived cassettes in the honeybee that make this system applicable to colony-based screening approaches and useful for an average beekeeping facility. This cassette was stably and efficiently transmitted and expressed in progeny by two different promoters, offering the prospect for activation or inhibition of gene functions under conditions of stage- and tissue-specific promoters.

[prakel]

Hi, who's behind this research?

[Little_John]

Well ... 20-odd percent of anything doesn't sound much like "high effiiciency" to me ... but that's not what's really important here. 'Transgenic' is but another word for 'Genetically Modified' !

Would anybody on here really be willing to keep (and to propagate) genetically modified bees ?

[fatshark]

I doubt it very much. But as a means to understand the genetics of a social insect it is likely to be a landmark paper. That is what the authors refer to in the 'significance' section. This methodology is likely to make the bee a much easier system to analyse for biologists … leading to further research and, in the long run, better understanding.

I now realise I didn't post the original link (http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2014/05/09/1402341111.abstract?sid=74f3a6a2-e826-4bf3-98ed-a19d9184a8bd) … apologies.

prakel, the authors are in Germany:

Department of Evolutionary Genetics, Heinrich Heine University Duesseldorf, D-40225 Duesseldorf, Germany

[prakel]

Thanks for the link, I must admit to simply not knowing enough to make a fully informed decision, but gut instinct is telling me that this has got to be a good thing but as you say in the opening post, it's going to polarize people in the extreme.

[Feckless Drone]

Would anybody on here really be willing to keep (and to propagate) genetically modified bees ?

With tin hat on. For about 150 yrs there have been, at various points, large scale imports of bees into the UK. So let me suggest that many beekeepers are already keeping genetically modified bees, as are farmers keeping the many variants of their livestock and pet owners. I suppose the difference is the application of molecular biology techniques.

[Little_John]

Thanks for the link.

What concerns me about this kind of science is that the "better understanding" you speak of - which of course, is quite true - then invariably leads to some form of control by our species (and for our own benefit) over yet another aspect of the natural world.

LJ

[Little_John]

With tin hat on. For about 150 yrs there have been, at various points, large scale imports of bees into the UK. So let me suggest that many beekeepers are already keeping genetically modified bees, as are farmers keeping the many variants of their livestock and pet owners. I suppose the difference is the application of molecular biology techniques.

Nature of course allows such modifications as part of the 'Natural Selection' process. With GM techniques, humans are now playing with bizarre modifications, often intertwining genetic materials which could never occur naturally - and always ONLY in those cases where it benefits humans in some way.

LJ

[busybeephilip]

Just had a very quick look at the paper so may have missed stuff

Looking at the images in this paper it is apparent that the white light images Fig1 of the drone do not line up with the red/green image - why?
The suplemental images FigS3 does not convince me, the part of the bee that is fluorescing in image B is from a younger drone that in image C where the exoskeletion is more developed therefore you would not see anything even if there was expression. Auto fluorescence in B can not be ruled out

The promoter used, 6xp3 is specific for glial cells , expression is supposed to be in the honeybee brain so why did they dot take sections of the brain which would have been much more logical.

I'm afraid I'm a bit sceptical - what you think Gavin ?

[Jon]

With GM techniques, humans are now playing with bizarre modifications, often intertwining genetic materials which could never occur naturally - and always ONLY in those cases where it benefits humans in some way.
LJ

LJ. What percentage of your own DNA do you reckon originated in viruses?

[busybeephilip]

There is a lot of viral DNA hiding in our genomes, eg lots of harmless retroviruses (HERV's)

A potential transgenic bee is a different thing, the landmark paper that claims to demonstrate integration of a small harmless marker gene controlled by its own artifical promotor into Bee DNA, (if it can be repeated and confirmed by another group) is a step towards producing a disease resistant bee which can only be a good thing. Unfortunately, disease resistance could involve many genes both modification and insertion so its a long way away before we ever see this.

I would also suspect that if it ever did go to market the queens for sale would be designed / mated in such a way that any benefit could not be passed to the next generation of queens (eg sterile drones or something) and you would have to go back to the breeder otherwise there would be no money in it

[Jon]

There is a lot of viral DNA hiding in our genomes, eg lots of harmless retroviruses (HERV's)

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20527451.200-i-virus-why-youre-only-half-human.html