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As some one who is very interested in the subject of honey bees, and several decades ago had a bee hive, I've been very concerned about colony collapse disorder. Today I came across this article: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-017-19137-5
Excerpt from the Nature abstract:
"Recent reports of the weakening and periodical high losses of managed honey bee colonies have alarmed beekeeper, farmers and scientists. Infestations with the ectoparasitic mite Varroa destructor in combination with its associated viruses have been identified as a crucial driver of these health problems. Although yearly treatments are required to prevent collapses of honey bee colonies, the number of effective acaricides is small and no new active compounds have been registered in the past 25 years. RNAi-based methods were proposed recently as a promising new tool. However, the application of these methods according to published protocols has led to a surprising discovery. Here, we show that the lithium chloride that was used to precipitate RNA and other lithium compounds is highly effective at killing Varroa mites when fed to host bees at low millimolar concentrations."
I am in no way, shape or form a biologist, but as I read through the article there was mention of gene targeting and so started to get way out of my knowledge area..which is electronics...and quickly lost me.
Is there any truth to this path or is it another way for insecticide makers to push their wares?
(Score: 5, Informative) by Zinho on Thursday January 18 2018, @06:10PM (2 children)
So, here's my read of what the article means:
* the researchers had a really sweet theory for doing gene-targeted insecticide that would just kill the mites [1]
* They set up a test with two separate controls, one with no active gene therapy, and another with a harmless gene therapy
* Harmless gene therapy and targeted gene therapy both had the same outcome - something was killing the mites, and it probably wasn't the genes
* The researchers narrowed down the possible culprits to one of the chemicals used to prepare the gene therapy, Lithium Chloride (LiCl)
* The rest of the article is all about the effectiveness of LiCl as an anti-mite treatment:
- they found the effective dose (2 miliMoles concentration)
- they determined that LiCl was not immediately toxic to the bees at the concentrations used
- they tried other Lithium salts, and found that Lithium Citrate was more effective, less expensive, and equally non-toxic compared to LiCl [2]
- they found that full hives do not respond identically to small groups kept in laboratory cages; the delivery system needs some work
* No knowledge of gene therapy is needed to understand this article's main point; you can ignore every mention of RNA and be fine
TL; DR version: this discovery is sort-of accidental, they were totally trying to do something else entirely [1]. They got excited enough about the accidental discovery [2] that they dropped their efforts to be all clever with genes and published this instead :)
[1] so, they're going to get the bees to eat RNA that codes for a protein that doesn't hurt bees, but does kill mites. The mites then bite the bees, drinking the mite-killer RNA, and the mites' bodies then start making the mite-killer protein. This totally works, killing about 60% of the mites over a period of 60 days. To verify this they had to repeat their experiment with all the LiCl washed out.
[2] "In cage experiments all compounds eliminated 100% of the mites at 25 mM within three (lithium citrate and lithium acetate) to four days (lithium sulphate, lithium lactate and lithium carbonate). Also, the 4-mM test solutions, entirely killed phoretic mites within five (lithium citrate, lithium sulphate, and lithium acetate) to seven days (lithium lactate)" 100% over four days is WAY more exciting than the gene therapy method.
"Space Exploration is not endless circles in low earth orbit." -Buzz Aldrin
(Score: 4, Insightful) by frojack on Thursday January 18 2018, @10:58PM
As is a lot of science. The brilliance is the open mindedness to pursue this experiment wreaking contaminant in deference to simply tossing the whole experiment aside as a failure.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by sbgen on Friday January 19 2018, @01:20AM
I wanted to compliment you on getting back to the article, slogging through and writing a good and informative summary. Good to be around nerds :-)
I upmoded frojack's observation about your comment on this work being "accidental". The reason this "accident" happened because the authors actually put a lot of thought in planning the experiment. They considered all sorts of "controls" for the experiment, along with the RNAi technique. So they were prepared for the "accident". A lesson in research is that planning the tests, planning the controls and designing the experiments take as much importance as getting the data, analyzing it and interpreting results.
This is also why they tested RNAi WITHOUT LiCl - to rule out they were not missing out on that front. BTW, 60% control took a long time as you note -> that may not be useful considering the short life cycle of bees. The ability of RNAi to control mites may not be of any consequence at all. The amounts of LiCl you noted are for the controlled experimental condition only. Actual field trial may need 50mM concentration - because the remedy has a small window of uptake by bees and there are lot of bees in hives. This is where Li-ctrate might be more useful as it has 2 Li atoms compared to one in LiCl.
This is a good work, scientifically as well as application-wise. Also, when you can get things done by a simple means pay attention. KISS principle applies in apiary too.
Warning: Not a computer expert, but got to use it. Yes, my kind does exist.