High expectations appear to exist for short-term
applications of the Honey Bee Genome project:

>> My question is how will the information that is gathered
>> be able to implemented in a practical way?

The current project is mere "map making".  It will take quite some
time to figure out what specific genes do.  This work is ongoing
with the human genome, and periodic reports appear in the press
about discoveries of the exact gene for this or that.

The "first draft" of the human genome was published two years ago.
The "final draft" was released this summer, but even this is
subject to revision, and will continue to be annotated and
explained long after we are all safely and cozily dead.

>> Will it mean access to a DNA lab where we will be able to go
>> to have our bees checked for the correct genes?

This question assumes that anyone knows "correct" from "wrong",
which I feel is premature.  Yes, some breeds of bee that appear
to show some limited superior traits will be sequenced, but your
bees are certain to have a number of "differences" when your bees'
sequences are compared with the "reference" bees, and no one would
be able to tell you much about what the differences mean.

Here's a good example.  The few members of the list who have seen
me know that I wear one of the more impressive collections of
freckles on the planet.  My older sister does not have any freckles.
We might have our respective DNA sequenced, and as we are brother
and sister, the sequences would be very similar.  But would we be
able to find the gene for freckles by looking at the differences?

Not a chance.

Yes, the gene is somewhere in the differences, but we would need to
study sequences from hundreds of different people just to be able to
narrow down segments of the human genome that are present in all of
the freckled people, and consistently NOT present in the non-freckled.

Even after mapping a large "survey", we would have nothing but a
list of "suspect" DNA fragments.  Finding the exact gene would
take much more work.

> Don't know but I suspect a bee DNA data bank will be setup.

There are several public mirrors of this data for the other
animals mapped.  One of the most useful is at UCSC.  Take a
look, it is pretty:

http://genome-hg8.cse.ucsc.edu/cgi-bin/hgTracks

...OK, not very useful to a beekeeper, but I assure you, it
IS useful to people who do this work.  (I don't do genes, so
don't ask me to explain much of it.)

I am sure that the honeybee data will be placed into the
public domain, and I expect it to appear at places like the
UCSC website/database.

> Dr. Kerr proved  over thirty years ago isolating genes could make
> whatever kind of bee you desire.

Exactly.  The >>isolation<< of specific genes will take time and effort.
Even then, genes are NOT simple switches.  You can "turn them on and off",
but the actual results are often highly unexpected.  As an example, you
turn off the gene for freckles, and find out that the resulting organism
is much less intelligent, a side-effect well-known to all freckled people.  :)

Here's another problem - humans have about 75,000 different proteins.
Howcome the human genome only contains about 34,000 genes?  No one has
an answer yet, but clearly, the "switches" are multi-purpose,
multi-function gizmos, rather than simple "on/off" switches.

Here's another "weird" thing - round worms (about the simplest animal
around) have a body with no more than 1000 cells, and a brain with
just over 300 cells.  It's genome has 18,000 genes.  The fruit fly
is much more complex in every way.  Its genome has about 13,000 genes.

Even though fruit flies and roundworms are popular subjects for
genetic experimentation, no one can explain the counter-intuitive
gene counts.  Just the eye of a fruit fly has more total cells than
an entire roundworm, but somehow, fruit flies have a "shorter" genome.

Sequencing the mouse showed that mice have roughly the same number
of genes as humans, So we have something like:

Round worm      18,000 genes
Fruit Fly       13,000
Mouse           34,000
Human           34,000

Not what you'd expect, is it?

Complications like the above have resulted in most of the "genetic
manipulation" done to date being limited to splicing in an existing
gene with a known trait from another organism.

But such work cannot even start without a map, so we are lucky to see
that bees are being looked at before other agricultural organisms.

Over time, the work >>will<< be done, and there certainly will be
tangible results of a practical nature.  But not this year, and
not next year.

I, for one, look forward to a modified bee that I have often mentioned.
Bees need specific genes from the firefly, to allow hives to be worked
in the evening without flashlights.  The "glow in the dark bee" would
revolutionize the industry, allowing commercial beekeeping to go on
"round the clock" in shifts, and allowing hobbyists to work their hives
in the cool of the evening.  :)

                jim

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