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Honeybee Genome Sequenced
mapkinase writes to let us know about articles in Nature on the completed sequencing of the honeybee genome. From the first article: "Two other insects have already been sequenced: the malaria-carrying mosquito Anopheles gambiae, and one of science's great model organisms, the fruitfly Drosophila melanogaster. Like these, the bee is much easier to manipulate and study than, say, the monkey. But unlike the mosquito and the fruitfly, the bee's social behavior is of special interest." Another article in the same issue clarifies why this sequencing is important: "The genome is helping to reveal some of those [such as the bees' dance language and the division of labor in the hive] mechanisms. For instance, there are 65 spots in the genome that seem to code for short RNA molecules called microRNAs (miRNAs), molecular switches that can turn genes on or off. The researchers found that miRNA activity differs between bees doing different jobs."
Interesting that miRNA could be turned off and on. These play a role in helping dicer form the RISC, so I wonder what this may lead to, not only in terms of info on honeybee's social behavior, but RNAi.
Cogito, ergo sum, fosho!
I bet this creates quite a buzz among genome researchers.
Is it just me, or does the whole DNA/Genome decoding process sound like rather complex dis-assembly project? Every living thing on this planet is nothing but a quad-nary based executable with VERY VERY good error-correction duplication.
never bring a twinkie to a food fight.
besides their social behavior, there is a lot known about how the navigation system of honeybees works (i.e., how they find the hive after foraging). Understanding honeybee genetics could have an impact on understanding and designing autonomous systems for robotics.
NO CARRIER
Reuters' original online article about this misidentified the queen bee as Queen Elizabeth, stating that Britain's monarch was capable of laying "up to 2,000 eggs a day"o _te.html
they've corrected it, but you can see the original article here:
http://www.regrettheerror.com/2006/10/reuters_typ
I understand this is pretty cool, but what could all the buzz bee about?
Gee thanks, now I'm going to spend the rest of the day imagining cows flitting from flower to flower gathering pollen.
KFG
The human genome projects worked from DNA samples pooled from a number of individuals, which were then assembled into a consensus "human genome". However the original sequenced reads can be aligned back to the reference to find differences (such as SNPs -- single nucleotide polymorphisms).
Substantial effort is underway to resequence the human genome in different individuals from different populations. The International Hapmap Project (http://www.hapmap.org/) is among the most high profile.
> Am I missing something here?
Yes. There is only so much you can do in a lab to humans. Or for that matter monkeys or mice. However PETA doesn't seem to realize that bees and flys are animals so...
More seriously, we work with model organisms because they are much easier to work with. You can do experiments that would either cost much much more or simply be impossible in a mammal model. Depending on what you are interested in there are lots of popular model organisms: nematodes, flys, bees, zebrafish, xenopus, mouse, rat, macaque... all useful for investigating different aspects of biology, and all relevant to human health at some level.
For the purposes of creating the reference sequence they essentially ignored them. In the public human genome project the DNA from a handful of individuals was used. The Celera project used mostly the DNA of one individual, Craig Venter, the head of Celera. This does make the reference sequence arbitrary, but so was the block of platinum that was used to define the kilogram. The idea is that you measure differences from the standard.
The rule of thumb is that the sequence of any two individualss differ in about 1 base in 1000. This ignores complications like that fact that women have of two copies of the X chromosome and men have 1 X and 1 Y chromosome, and that whole sections of sequence can sometimes get shifted from one chromosome to another. As the other responder pointed out the variations are a major focus of research, particularly Single Nucleotide Polymorphisms (SNPs) where 90% of the population have an 'A' in a particulary position and 10% have a 'G'.
The definition of the kilogram was originally made in terms of a particular volume of water, but was later changed to the weight of a particluar ingot of irridium-platinum.