Difference between revisions of "Team:British Columbia"

 
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<p align="justify">Imagine a nice summer day outside in the meadows without the buzzing and humming of bees. It would be pretty quiet. But not only that. Probably, you also wouldn’t be able to enjoy the beauty of many flowers. And the crops on the field next to it wouldn't carry many fruits. This scenario may become reality in the near future because bees are dying on a massive scale. Honeybees are of great ecological and economical importance. They are responsible for the large-scale pollination of various plants like wild flowers and crops. It is estimated that honeybees pollinate $14 billion worth of crops per year in the United States alone. Worryingly, this economy is at risk because of substantial declines in honeybees.</p>
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<p align="justify">Since 2006, beekeepers report the dying of bees in large numbers. This phenomenon was termed <b>Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD)</b>. The cause of CCD is still not fully understood. Experts believe that multiple factors work in concert and cause the symptoms of CCD. Among these factors are parasites, like the varroa mite, bacterial diseases and virus infections, as well as pesticides. Neonicotinoid pesticides such as imidacloprid have been reported in the media to play a significant role in CCD. It was shown that neonicotinoids have a toxic effect on honeybees and may lead to behavioral changes of the worker bees, leading to the risk for a colony to forfeit their working forces. This has already driven the ban of neonicotinoids in the European Union. However, without these pesticides, farmers are facing large economic losses and have been forced to go back to more traditional pesticides that have an even more detrimental effect on the environment. But what can we do instead?</p>
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<p align="justify">Our project aims to provide a synthetic biology-based approach to solve one aspect on the issue around CCD and neonicotinoids.
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We are proposing to treat honeybees with engineered probiotic bacteria, or <i>probeeotics</i>, that protect the bees from the toxic effects of neonicotinoids. We are working with <i>Gilliamella apicola</i>, a native midgut bacterium specific to honeybees. We aim to engineer <i>G. apicola</i> to degrade imidacloprid into non-toxic compounds. By feeding this bacteria to honeybees, we believe honeybees will become less susceptible to common field doses of imidacloprid, which will reduce the risk of CCD. This approach will enable farmers to continue using neonicotinoids and benefit from the advantageous pest control characteristics while protecting the honeybees from their detrimental effects.</p>
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<p>According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, bees pollinate 80% of our flowering crops, which constitute one third of everything we eat. From an economic standpoint, a study done at Cornell University estimates that honeybees pollinate $14 billion worth of seeds and crops per year in the United States alone. Unfortunately, global bee populations have been under attack since the early 1990s; in 2015, US beekeepers reported that 42% of their colonies died within the past year.</p>
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<p>Honeybee Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) refers to a phenomenon in which adult working bees disappear from the colony, leaving behind the queen bee and resulting in its eventual collapse. CCD remains a major concern across North America and Europe. Though the mechanisms by which CCD occurs are still unknown, neonicotinoids (a widely-used class of pesticides) and Nosema apis (an endoparasite that grows in the midgut of the honeybee following infection) have been implicated.</p>
 
  
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<p>UBC’s 2015 iGEM team aims to create a strain of engineered honeybee intestinal bacterium capable of degrading the neonicotinoid pesticide imidacloprid, alongside an antifungal agent to eliminate Nosema apis. In doing so, we plan to render inoculated honeybees resistant to both Nosema and to common field doses of imidacloprid, allowing its sustained use while reducing the risk of CCD.</p>
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<p>Gilliamella apicola is a bacterium that natively resides in the midgut of the bee. We believe that by engineering Gilliamella to metabolize imidacloprid into harmless organic compounds as well as to produce gastrodianin, a potent antifungal agent, we can create a strain of Gilliamella capable of conferring resistance to imidacloprid and Nosema, significantly reducing the risk of CCD once stably introduced into the bee gut.</p>
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<p>Imidacloprid is known to be naturally degraded in the environment to 6-chloronicotinic acid (6-CNA). Though 6-CNA displays a significantly lower lethal dosage than imidacloprid, it remains bioactive to a small degree. As such, we plan to investigate downstream enzymes that further degrade 6-CNA, and use this novel pathway in Gilliamella to degrade imidacloprid to a completely non-toxic product in the bee gut.</p></div>
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<h6>UBC iGEM 2015</h6>
 
 
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Latest revision as of 03:56, 19 September 2015

UBC iGEM 2015













    Imagine a nice summer day outside in the meadows without the buzzing and humming of bees. It would be pretty quiet. But not only that. Probably, you also wouldn’t be able to enjoy the beauty of many flowers. And the crops on the field next to it wouldn't carry many fruits. This scenario may become reality in the near future because bees are dying on a massive scale. Honeybees are of great ecological and economical importance. They are responsible for the large-scale pollination of various plants like wild flowers and crops. It is estimated that honeybees pollinate $14 billion worth of crops per year in the United States alone. Worryingly, this economy is at risk because of substantial declines in honeybees.


    Since 2006, beekeepers report the dying of bees in large numbers. This phenomenon was termed Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD). The cause of CCD is still not fully understood. Experts believe that multiple factors work in concert and cause the symptoms of CCD. Among these factors are parasites, like the varroa mite, bacterial diseases and virus infections, as well as pesticides. Neonicotinoid pesticides such as imidacloprid have been reported in the media to play a significant role in CCD. It was shown that neonicotinoids have a toxic effect on honeybees and may lead to behavioral changes of the worker bees, leading to the risk for a colony to forfeit their working forces. This has already driven the ban of neonicotinoids in the European Union. However, without these pesticides, farmers are facing large economic losses and have been forced to go back to more traditional pesticides that have an even more detrimental effect on the environment. But what can we do instead?

    Our project aims to provide a synthetic biology-based approach to solve one aspect on the issue around CCD and neonicotinoids. We are proposing to treat honeybees with engineered probiotic bacteria, or probeeotics, that protect the bees from the toxic effects of neonicotinoids. We are working with Gilliamella apicola, a native midgut bacterium specific to honeybees. We aim to engineer G. apicola to degrade imidacloprid into non-toxic compounds. By feeding this bacteria to honeybees, we believe honeybees will become less susceptible to common field doses of imidacloprid, which will reduce the risk of CCD. This approach will enable farmers to continue using neonicotinoids and benefit from the advantageous pest control characteristics while protecting the honeybees from their detrimental effects.