{"id":1613,"date":"2023-12-06T19:49:00","date_gmt":"2023-12-06T19:49:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/new.www.purdue.edu\/newsroom\/?p=1613"},"modified":"2024-06-28T13:11:57","modified_gmt":"2024-06-28T13:11:57","slug":"research-team-explores-genomic-options-to-enhance-honeybee-resilience","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.purdue.edu\/newsroom\/2023\/Q4\/research-team-explores-genomic-options-to-enhance-honeybee-resilience","title":{"rendered":"Research team explores genomic options to enhance honeybee resilience"},"content":{"rendered":"

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. —<\/p> \n

Beekeepers lose between 30% and 40% of their colonies annually, mostly to parasites and pathogens. Losses during one bad year in Indiana reached 60%.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

\u201cThe traditional methods of bee breeding have been around for nearly 100 years,\u201d said Purdue University\u2019s Brock Harpur<\/a>, assistant professor of entomology<\/a>. Although breeders have made progress, many of their methods remain unchanged even with the recent availability of affordable gene sequencing. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe honeybee genome was sequenced in 2006. There really hasn\u2019t been a lot of bee breeding in this country that\u2019s been empowered by that resource,\u201d he said. Harpur aims to change that with Purdue\u2019s Luiz Brito<\/a>, associate professor of animal sciences<\/a>, and Gregor Gorjanc<\/a> of the Roslin Institute<\/a> at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland. They seek to validate genomic breeding tools while designing a system that bee breeders can implement themselves.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Their work is among the projects supported by $11.6 million in grants allocated from the U.S. Department of Agriculture<\/a> National Institute of Food and Agriculture<\/a> earlier this year to promote healthy pollinator populations. Agricultural pollination production from the beekeeping industry in the U.S. is valued at more than $19 billion annually.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThat excludes honey production, which is another huge industry,\u201d Harpur said. \u201cBee breeding is central to that. Beekeepers historically have responded to industry threats with breeding. The goal here is to help them do that better with genomics resources.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Five years ago, with genetic samples priced at $400 each, that prospect would have been costly. But the price has dropped to about $50 per sample. A 2017 economic case study<\/a> of Canadian honeybee colonies assessed the value of an expensive sequencing technology.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThey were looking at one trait versus the many we\u2019re hoping to predict,\u201d Harpur said. \u201cThey showed that if a beekeeper used these more expensive genome-enabled breeding techniques, they could increase their profits by between 9% and 96%. Using genomic technology, we think we can increase the amount of money that beekeepers make.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Harpur\u2019s lab, which operates a gene sequencing service for beekeepers, has sequenced nearly 2,000 samples from across the country. \u201cIf you’re a beekeeper, you can send us a bee, and we’ll sequence it and tell you about it and where it’s from,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Harpur can use the genotypes from that same database to see how effectively they predict breeding values under ideal conditions. He also uses simulated datasets to explore the statistical validity of his approach on supercomputers at Purdue\u2019s Rosen Center for Advanced Computing<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The simulations allow the researchers to assess how many samples are enough to statistically validate their goals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIf we have a thousand samples, is that enough?\u201d Harpur said. \u201cDo we need 10 times more? A hundred times more? And furthermore, if those thousand samples come from 10 different populations, does that matter?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The computer simulations also enable the scientists to analyze thousands or millions of honeybee genomes with many different histories and from many different situations to see how well their genomic predictions fit reality. The simulations can even help identify which of the many available genome sequencing methods might work best, Harpur noted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Harpur works closely with bee breeding organizations nationally, especially the Indiana Queen Breeders Association<\/a>. Some trials and genomic data collection already have begun. \u201cWe’re going to start local, show that this works and then move to a more global scale,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As an evolutionary biologist, Harpur sees the project as a way to answer questions both for bee breeding and for basic science. How does the artificial selection of bee breeding affect bee colonies, which consist of tens of thousands of highly social individuals?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThey\u2019re all genetically related, and they all collectively manifest these traits that we\u2019re interested in,\u201d he said. \u201cWhen I talk about honey production, that\u2019s not the action of one bee. That\u2019s the action of thousands of related bees.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cSo, when you make a prediction on a single genome for a trait that thousands of individuals contributed to, how exactly does that math work out? And how exactly does selection work in a case like that?\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. — Beekeepers lose between 30% and 40% of their colonies annually, mostly to parasites and pathogens. Losses during one bad year in Indiana reached 60%. \u201cThe traditional methods of bee breeding have been around for nearly 100<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":1614,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"department":[6],"source":[29],"purdue_today_topic":[66],"coauthors":[53],"class_list":["post-1613","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-research-excellence","department-agriculture","source-purdue-news","purdue_today_topic-research"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.purdue.edu\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1613","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.purdue.edu\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.purdue.edu\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.purdue.edu\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.purdue.edu\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1613"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.purdue.edu\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1613\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4072,"href":"https:\/\/www.purdue.edu\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1613\/revisions\/4072"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.purdue.edu\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1614"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.purdue.edu\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1613"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.purdue.edu\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1613"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.purdue.edu\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1613"},{"taxonomy":"department","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.purdue.edu\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/department?post=1613"},{"taxonomy":"source","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.purdue.edu\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/source?post=1613"},{"taxonomy":"purdue_today_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.purdue.edu\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/purdue_today_topic?post=1613"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.purdue.edu\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=1613"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}