Chronic bee paralysis as a serious emerging threat to honey bees

This work was funded jointly by BBSRC grants BB/R00482X/1 (Newcastle University) and BB/R00305X/1 (University of St Andrews) in partnership with The Bee Farmers’ Association and the National Bee Unit of the Animal and Plant Health Agency.Chronic bee paralysis is a well-defined viral disease of honey bees with a global distribution that until recently caused rare but severe symptomatology including colony loss. Anecdotal evidence indicates a recent increase in virus incidence in several countries, but no mention of concomitant disease. We use government honey bee health inspection records from England and Wales to test whether chronic bee paralysis is an emerging infectious disease and investigate the spatiotemporal patterns of disease. The number of chronic bee paralysis cases increased exponentially between 2007 and 2017, demonstrating chronic bee paralysis as an emergent disease. Disease is highly clustered spatially within most years, suggesting local spread, but not between years, suggesting disease burnt out with periodic reintroduction. Apiary and county level risk factors are confirmed to include scale of beekeeping operation and the history of honey bee imports. Our findings offer epidemiological insight into this damaging emerging disease.Publisher PDFPeer reviewe

Appetitive olfactory learning and memory in the honeybee depend on sugar reward identity

One of the most important tasks of the brain is to learn and remember information associated with food. Studies in mice and Drosophila have shown that sugar rewards must be metabolisable to form lasting memories, but few other animals have been studied. Here, we trained adult, worker honeybees (Apis mellifera) in two olfactory tasks (massed and spaced conditioning) known to affect memory formation to test how the schedule of reinforcement and the nature of a sugar reward affected learning and memory. The antennae and mouthparts of honeybees were most sensitive to sucrose but glucose and fructose were equally phagostimulatory. Whether or not bees could learn the tasks depended on sugar identity and concentration. However, only bees rewarded with glucose or sucrose formed robust long-term memory. This was true for bees trained in both the massed and spaced conditioning tasks. Honeybees fed with glucose or fructose exhibited a surge in haemolymph sugar of greater than 120. mM within 30. s that remained elevated for as long as 20. min after a single feeding event. For bees fed with sucrose, this change in haemolymph glucose and fructose occurred with a 30. s delay. Our data showed that olfactory learning in honeybees was affected by sugar identity and concentration, but that olfactory memory was most strongly affected by sugar identity. Taken together, these data suggest that the neural mechanisms involved in memory formation sense rapid changes in haemolymph glucose that occur during and after conditioning

Establishing a large prospective clinical cohort in people with head and neck cancer as a biomedical resource: head and neck 5000

BACKGROUND: Head and neck cancer is an important cause of ill health. Survival appears to be improving but the reasons for this are unclear. They could include evolving aetiology, modifications in care, improvements in treatment or changes in lifestyle behaviour. Observational studies are required to explore survival trends and identify outcome predictors. METHODS: We are identifying people with a new diagnosis of head and neck cancer. We obtain consent that includes agreement to collect longitudinal data, store samples and record linkage. Prior to treatment we give participants three questionnaires on health and lifestyle, quality of life and sexual history. We collect blood and saliva samples, complete a clinical data capture form and request a formalin fixed tissue sample. At four and twelve months we complete further data capture forms and send participants further quality of life questionnaires. DISCUSSION: This large clinical cohort of people with head and neck cancer brings together clinical data, patient-reported outcomes and biological samples in a single co-ordinated resource for translational and prognostic research

Multiple novel prostate cancer susceptibility signals identified by fine-mapping of known risk loci among Europeans

Genome-wide association studies (GWAS) have identified numerous common prostate cancer (PrCa) susceptibility loci. We have fine-mapped 64 GWAS regions known at the conclusion of the iCOGS study using large-scale genotyping and imputation in 25 723 PrCa cases and 26 274 controls of European ancestry. We detected evidence for multiple independent signals at 16 regions, 12 of which contained additional newly identified significant associations. A single signal comprising a spectrum of correlated variation was observed at 39 regions; 35 of which are now described by a novel more significantly associated lead SNP, while the originally reported variant remained as the lead SNP only in 4 regions. We also confirmed two association signals in Europeans that had been previously reported only in East-Asian GWAS. Based on statistical evidence and linkage disequilibrium (LD) structure, we have curated and narrowed down the list of the most likely candidate causal variants for each region. Functional annotation using data from ENCODE filtered for PrCa cell lines and eQTL analysis demonstrated significant enrichment for overlap with bio-features within this set. By incorporating the novel risk variants identified here alongside the refined data for existing association signals, we estimate that these loci now explain ∼38.9% of the familial relative risk of PrCa, an 8.9% improvement over the previously reported GWAS tag SNPs. This suggests that a significant fraction of the heritability of PrCa may have been hidden during the discovery phase of GWAS, in particular due to the presence of multiple independent signals within the same regio

mRNA expression of the three candidate sugar receptors, AmGr1, AmGr2 and AmGr3 in the brains of ‘starved’ forager honeybees (provided with 10μl of 0.7M sucrose then held for 24 h without food).

<p>All expression levels are relative to mRNA expression of the reference gene RP49 (RPL32) in the brain. The expression of each gene has been normalised to the mRNA expression of that same gene under 0.7M sucrose a<i>d libitum</i> feeding conditions over 96h, ‘fed’ condition, set at a value of 1.0 (represented by the hashed line). Expression levels are not comparable between genes. *: P < 0.05 One-Sample Wilcoxon Signed Rank test. N = 3–4 biological replicates (15–20 whole brains measured as mRNA pooled from groups of 5 brains).</p

Gustatory receptor mRNA levels are not equal in every body part in both newly-emerged and forager honeybees.

<p>All expression levels are relative to the expression of the reference gene RP49 (RPL32) and are normalised to AmGr1 in the forager brain. <b>A.</b> Expression levels of the candidate sugar receptors (AmGr1 and AmGr2) and fructose receptor (AmGr3) genes across the un-manipulated forager (≈2–3 wk old) and newly emerged honeybee (≈24 h old) anatomy. <b>B.</b> Expression levels of the candidate bitter receptors in forager and newly emerged bees (NA represents unavailable data.). <b>C.</b> Expression levels of the unknown and potentially <i>Apis</i>-specific receptor genes in forager and newly-emerged bees. Note: AmGr9 mRNA expression levels were detected in all tissue types in both groups however levels were too low to include reliable expression values. Cells are shaded to indicate level of expression. N^{soft tissue}: 20 individual tissues. N^{hard tissue}: 75–150 individual tissues.</p

GZLM for gustatory receptor expression in brains and guts of newly emerged and forager honeybees with age and body part as independent variables for a full factorial analysis.

<p>GZLM for gustatory receptor expression in brains and guts of newly emerged and forager honeybees with age and body part as independent variables for a full factorial analysis.</p

Parallel Reinforcement Pathways for Conditioned Food Aversions in the Honeybee

Avoiding toxins in food is as important as obtaining nutrition. Conditioned food aversions have been studied in animals as diverse as nematodes and humans [1, 2], but the neural signaling mechanisms underlying this form of learning have been difficult to pinpoint. Honeybees quickly learn to associate floral cues with food [3], a trait that makes them an excellent model organism for studying the neural mechanisms of learning and memory. Here we show that honeybees not only detect toxins but can also learn to associate odors with both the taste of toxins and the postingestive consequences of consuming them. We found that two distinct monoaminergic pathways mediate learned food aversions in the honeybee. As for other insect species conditioned with salt or electric shock reinforcers [4–7], learned avoidances of odors paired with bad-tasting toxins are mediated by dopamine. Our experiments are the first to identify a second, postingestive pathway for learned olfactory aversions that involves serotonin. This second pathway may represent an ancient mechanism for food aversion learning conserved across animal lineages