From the press release:
"Toxic viral cocktails appear to have a strong link with honey bee Colony
Collapse Disorder (CCD)..."
What, they've found the cause of CCD?
AGAIN?
Full text of paper:
http://mbio.asm.org/content/5/1/e00898-13
http://tinyurl.com/mk7w9b7
(Click on one of the links at the right top under "This Article".)
I'm, ummm... skeptical, but Judy Chen appears as the last author, and as
the inquiry contact, and Judy's work to date has been elegant.
Given all the bees samples analyzed since 2007, one is forced to wonder why
no plant virus has appeared to be present in significant quantities and so
consistently through "metagenomics", sequencing, proteomics, IDVS, and so
on. Looks like a more recent development... a "piling on" phenomena.
Or, its merely the latest opportunistic infection that exploits an
already-weak and doomed hive due to the usual DWV and other varroa-verctored
problems we've failed to defeat over the past 20 years.
"tobacco ringspot virus (TRSV)"
Tobacco. So now we can also have the anti-smoking crusaders fund-raising on
the backs of bees and beekeepers!
Time to dig out my "Smoke 'em if ya got 'em" tee shirt, the one with a
smoker on the back, of course.
"our data indicate that the replication of TRSV occurs widely in the
honeybee body but not in the gut or salivary gland and that TRSV in
conjunction with other bee viruses is correlated with winter colony level
declines. Further, virus was found in a common ectoparasite mite of
honeybees, Varroa destructor, but was restricted to the gastric cecum."
So to answer Jerry's question, the virus seems to have been found IN the
bee, rather than ON the bee.
"Except for the compound eyes, TRSV was found in all tissues examined,
including hemolymph, wings, legs, antennae, brain, fat bodies, salivary
gland, gut, nerves, tracheae, and hypopharyngeal gland. Although there was
the same amount of input cDNA, the intensity of the PCR signals varied
between samples. Tissues of the gut and muscle had weaker PCR bands than
other tissues, indicating a relatively lower level of TRSV infection (Fig.
3). It is unclear if the absence of PCR amplification in the compound eye
was due to PCR inhibition previously reported for that tissue..."
***********************************************
The BEE-L mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned
LISTSERV(R) list management software. For more information, go to:
http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html
|
