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."

Comments

How cool.

[DrunkenTerror]

I bet this creates quite a buzz among genome researchers.

Re:How cool.

[Renfield Spiffioso]

Yes, they'll have plenty of information to comb through.

softICE, anyone?

[Connie_Lingus]

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.

Re:softICE, anyone?

[Nigel Stepp]

Oh, it's much worse than that. Imagine if the opcode for ADD, say, would add to BX if it were after a JMP, but to AX if it were after a MOV.

Many of the features of biology are context dependent, which makes predicative analysis quite difficult.

Re:softICE, anyone?

[Stealth Potato]

Considering the number of live sacrifices I had to make to ensure the success of my last x86 project, yes, I'd say that sounds reasonable.

Re:miRNA?

[Tatarize]

It's neat to find, but it had to be there. Each bee has the same core DNA. The drones and queen and each sub variety of bee all use the same DNA. For the geeks in the audience who aren't bio-geeks as well.

Make Wings;
Make Thorax;
Make Head;
Size = 10;
if (Bee == Queen){//miRNA
        Size = 30;
        Behavior = "Go around laying eggs";
}
else {
        Size = 10;
        Behavior = "Go around gathering honey";
}

Give or take. miRNA goes around turning off certain gene stuff. I'm too lazy to RTFA, but I'd like to know the relationship between miRNA and royal jelly.

honeybees are very cool

[myc]

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.

Re:honeybees are very cool

[edschurr]

Another cool thing about them is that two genes exist in some groups of honey bee which helps them fight a disease that affects larvae. The first gene causes* them to remove the wax covering the diseased larvae, and the second causes* them to toss the larvae out of the nest to die. Groups of honey bees that only have the first gene will remove the wax and leave it at that. However, it's apparantly more complex than two genes causing behaviour because some honey bees do it without those genes.

Well, that's how I remember it from The Selfish Gene by Dawkins.

* perhaps not completely

Reuters Error

[saviorsloth]

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"
they've corrected it, but you can see the original article here:
http://www.regrettheerror.com/2006/10/reuters_typo _te.html

Re:Honey bee genome sequenced?

[kfg]

Gee thanks, now I'm going to spend the rest of the day imagining cows flitting from flower to flower gathering pollen.

KFG

Re:What about variations?

[valis]

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.

Re:miRNA?

[MikShapi]

Not exactly. More like:

Make Wings;
Make Thorax;
Make Head;
Size = 10;
if (GrowthStoppingHormonePresent == false){
                Size+=20;
                if (OtherQueenPresent == true){kill it;}
                Spray Growth Stopping Hormone On All Bees Around You;
}
else
{
                Behavior = "Go around gathering honey";
}

Re:What about variations?

[CharlesEGrant]

So when they sequence the human genome, how do they handle the variations?

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'.