In important research published this week, 454 Life Sciences (Roche) says its technology has provided a critical clue into the perplexing mystery of the decimated bee populations in North America.
The so-called colony collapse disorder (CCD) has mystified biologists for over a year, with an estimated 10 billion bees (2.4 million hives) lost. First recognized last year in the Unites States, similar outbreaks have since been reported across continental Europe. A host of theories have been put forward to explain the disappearance, but no convincing clues. In August, the New Yorker published a superb article by Elizabeth Kolbert on the search for the mystery CCD agent.
454 and scientists at Columbia University led by Diana Cox-Foster and Ian Lipkin undertook a “metagenomic” approach to identify possible culprits. The results, reported this week in Science, revealed traces of several foreign viruses, fungi, and bacteria associated with the honeybee affected populations. However, one sequence appears particularly significant: that of the Israeli Acute paralysis Paralysis Virus (IAPV), which was only detected in the collapsed colonies.
The authors of the study stress that this does not prove a causal relationship between IAPV and CCD. “Nonetheless, the prevalence of IAPV sequences in CCD operations, as well as the temporal and geographic overlap of CCD and importation of IAPV infected bees, indicate that IAPV is a significant marker for CCD,” the authors conclude.
“Unbiased 454 sequencing technology enabled us to rapidly assemble a comprehensive inventory of microflora in [CCD] and non-CCD populations, and provided the sequence information needed to identify candidate pathogens,” said Lipkin. “We view this work as a model for investigating epidemics of unexplained infectious disease.”
“We are very pleased to see our technology applied to solve real-world problems. We are hopeful this latest research will help eliminate the threat of CCD to global agriculture,” commented Christopher McLeod, president of 454. McLeod touted the ability of 454’s approach to detect and identify various organisms without prior knowledge of the sample’s constituents.
Bees are essential for the pollination of more than 90 fruit and vegetable crops worldwide. In CCD, the worker bees mysteriously disappear from honeybee colonies. A prevailing theory is that the bees’ immune systems are somehow compromised, facilitating infection by a wide variety of organisms. The observation that irradiated honeycombs from affected colonies could be repopulated with healthy bees, while non-sterilized combs could not, suggested an infectious basis for CCD.
Further Reading:
Stung, by Elizabeth Kolbert. The New Yorker. August 6, 2007.
Cox-Foster, DL et al. “A metagenomic survey of microbes in honey bee colony collapse disorder," Science, September 7, 2007.