Team:British Columbia
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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 massive declines in honey bees.
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. Amongst these factors are parasites, like the varroa mite, bacterial diseases and virus infections, as well as pesticides. Neonicotinoid pesticides such as imidacloprid carry a major part of the blame. 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 already drove the ban of neonicotinoids in the European Union. However, without these pesticides farmers are facing large economic losses and are forced to go back and use more traditional pesticides that have an even more detrimental effect on the environment.
Our project aims to provide a synthetic biology approach to solve one aspect on the issue around CCD and neonicotinoids. We are proposing to treat honey bees with engineered probiotic bacteria, or pro-bee-otics, 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 the detrimental effects of the pesticides.
UBC iGEM 2015