A viral pathogen that typically infects plants has been found in
honeybees and could help explain their decline. Researchers working in the U.S.
and Beijing, China report their findings in mBio, the online open-access
journal of the American Society for Microbiology. The routine screening of bees for frequent and rare viruses
“resulted in the serendipitous detection of Tobacco Ringspot Virus, or
TRSV, and prompted an investigation into whether this plant-infecting virus
could also cause systemic infection in the bees,” says Yan Ping Chen from
the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Agricultural Research Service (ARS)
laboratory in Beltsville, Maryland, an author on the study.
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“The results of our study provide the first evidence that
honeybees exposed to virus-contaminated pollen can also be infected and that
the infection becomes widespread in their bodies,” says lead author Ji
Lian Li, at the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Science in Beijing.
“We already know that honeybees, Apis melllifera, can transmit
TRSV when they move from flower to flower, likely spreading the virus from one
plant to another,” Chen adds.
Notably, about 5% of known plant viruses are pollen-transmitted and
thus potential sources of host-jumping viruses. RNA viruses tend to be
particularly dangerous because they lack the 3′-5′ proofreading function which
edits out errors in replicated genomes. As a result, viruses such as TRSV
generate a flood of variant copies with differing infective properties.
One consequence of such high replication rates is populations of RNA
viruses thought to exist as “quasi species,” clouds of genetically
related variants that appear to work together to determine the pathology of
their hosts. These sources of genetic diversity, coupled with large population
sizes, further facilitate the adaption of RNA viruses to new selective conditions
such as those imposed by novel hosts. “Thus, RNA viruses are a likely
source of emerging and reemerging infectious diseases,” explain these
researchers.
Toxic viral cocktails appear to have a strong link with honeybee
Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD), a mysterious malady that abruptly wiped out
entire hives across the United States and was first reported in 2006. Israel
Acute Paralysis Virus (IAPV), Acute Bee Paralysis Virus (ABPV), Chronic
Paralysis Virus (CPV), Kashmir Bee Virus (KBV), Deformed Wing Bee Virus (DWV),
Black Queen Cell Virus (BQCV) and Sacbrood Virus (SBV) are other known causes
of honeybee viral disease.
Read
more at the American Society for Microbiology.
Honeybee
image via Shutterstock.