Bee calamity clarified
Posted by Bob Grant
An illness that has been decimating US honeybees for more than three years probably isn't caused by a single virus, but by multiple viruses that wear down the bees' ability to produce proteins that can guard them against infection, according to a new study.
"We may not have the smoking gun," University of Illinois entomologist May Berenbaum, the study's main author, told The Scientist, but "we found the bullet hole."
Cells taken from bees that had succumbed to colony collapse disorder (CCD) were cluttered with ribosomal RNA fragments, suggesting that the bees had trouble translating genetic material into functional proteins, Berenbaum and her colleagues report today (August 24) in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Bee calamity clarified
An illness that has been decimating US honeybees for more than three years probably isn't caused by a single virus, but by multiple viruses that wear down the bees' ability to produce proteins that can guard them against infection, according to a new study.
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"We may not have the smoking gun," University of Illinois entomologist May Berenbaum, the study's main author, told The Scientist, but "we found the bullet hole."
Cells taken from bees that had succumbed to colony collapse disorder (CCD) were cluttered with ribosomal RNA fragments, suggesting that the bees had trouble translating genetic material into functional proteins, Berenbaum and her colleagues report today (August 24) in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Bee calamity clarified
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