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Honeybee Genome Sequenced
Journal written by mapkinase (958129) and posted by
kdawson
on Sat Oct 28, 2006 01:10 PM
from the plan-bee dept.
from the plan-bee dept.
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."
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The BEEginnings of the Bee 14 comments
KingArthur10 writes "The Register-Guard is reporting about the discovery of the oldest known relative of the insect providing sugary goodness to the world. From the Article: 'It's as old as the dinosaurs for sure, and just as extinct. As for size, well, the tiny fossilized bee recently uncovered by an Oregon State University scientist is decidedly unlike a dinosaur, but that hasn't kept it from becoming the buzz of the entomology world.
That's because this little bee dates to 100 million years ago, making it the earliest known member of the insect line that later became today's familiar honeybee and the first to show signs that it pollinated flowers. It is helping cement the theory that bees long ago developed a taste for nectar and branched off from meat-eating wasps to pursue a life among the petals.'"
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miRNA? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:miRNA? (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
Parent
Re:miRNA? (Score:4, Informative)
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";
}
Parent
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And we're talking biology, so there's no coder. It can do stuff in the most brilliant way possible or in a way so stupid a third grader might wince. Evolution isn't smart, but it solves problems.
----------------------
Class Bee : Public arthropod {
public:
Dance(location flowerLocation);
Lay(Obje
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Honey bee genome sequenced? (Score:2)
C'mon I want this to put on my cereal!
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Re:Honey bee genome sequenced? (Score:4, Funny)
KFG
Parent
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WARNING link contains nudity!!!!!!!!!!!
How cool. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:How cool. (Score:4, Funny)
Parent
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> What are they going to discover about what is turned OFF or ON in the gay community?
Violence?
> In DRUG ADDICTS?
Now thats a problem with addiction, but the problem occurs from something else. Difficult subject but whatever is the cause -- society? Is to blame.
> in mental illness?
Lack of stupidity? Depression is a sane reaction to the insane environment. [Taken from this very good comment [slashdot.org]]
> Politicians?
Heh
softICE, anyone? (Score:3, Interesting)
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Many of the features of biology are context dependent, which makes predicative analysis quite difficult.
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Re:softICE, anyone? (Score:4, Funny)
Parent
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Uhh. ohhh. quite the opposite. Error correction is very bad (by IT standards at least) -that is how actually things evolve (since there is no mechanism for modification except mutation - which is an error). On average every single cell in human body has at least one error. Granted absolute majority of them are insignificant (since they happen on non functioning parts of code for this cell)
Living organism are quite a freaking mess from engineer's p
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In damn near all programming work I have ever done, the slightest error usually resulted in an immediate terminal fault or worse, a BSOD.
When I consider that my entire biological OS - everything that coded me for what I am - consists of about 1 gigabyte of code ( considering human DNA consists of 3 billion base pair; 3 base pair to a codon; codon roughly equivalent to byte ), I can hardly consider my coding shoddy. I
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Ermm.. you can't boast 5 nines of uptime either. And it doesn't take 20 years just to boot up and do anything remotely useful.
In damn near all programming work I have ever done, the slightest error usually resulted in an immediate terminal fault or worse, a BSOD.
I don't see any more "bang for the buck" as I see in biology.
If I spent the rest of my life in front of a DNA sequencer, I doubt I could code to get t
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For some organs of the body to grow into complex shapes, some cells have to be pre-programmed to die at the correct time in order for
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Not so sure about that. The encoding of amino acids in genes is quite well defined (though there are exceptions, such as selenocysteine which is produced when a signal in the 3' UTR changes the meaning of a stop codon).
And protein coding sequences only make up about 1.5% of the genome for humans. Other things in DNA are much less clear, everything in biology is stochastic. Many functional elements are directly involved in protein-DNA interactions w
honeybees are very cool (Score:5, Interesting)
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I could see the use of a self-replicating macromolecule (if not DNA, then like it) to code for proteins or some other material.
Genome sequencing seems akin to early (and current) physicists work at discovering and defining the periodic table of elements.
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How's WINE coming along these days? I know it's hard to believe but the Windows API isn't nearly as complex as the genetics of a bee.
Knowing how an organism goes about its business can be a far cry from how a robot should go about its business.
Do you really want robots spiraling in toward ev
Re:honeybees are very cool (Score:4, Informative)
Well, that's how I remember it from The Selfish Gene by Dawkins.
* perhaps not completely
Parent
Reuters Error (Score:5, Funny)
they've corrected it, but you can see the original article here:
http://www.regrettheerror.com/2006/10/reuters_typ
Pretty cool, but (Score:3, Funny)
What about variations? (Score:2)
So when they sequence the human genome, how do they handle the variations? Does everyone in the project work from the same person's DNA?
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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:What about variations? (Score:4, Informative)
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) [nih.gov] where 90% of the population have an 'A' in a particulary position and 10% have a 'G'.
Parent
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Direct application: cheap honey (Score:2)
First, DDT got banned [salem-news.com]. Ever hear the Joni Mitchell song that goes, "Hey farmer farmer, take away the DDT now. Give me spots on apples, but leave me the birds and the bees, please." Unfortunately, the opposite happened: without DDT, honeybee competitors thrived, and stronger pesticides that actually did harm the bee were introduced.
The next problem was the
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I could have sworn that the africanized honeybees were immune to the mites? I must be wrong...
Ever hear the Joni Mitchell song that goes, "Hey farmer farmer, take away the DDT now. Give me spots on apples, but leave me the birds and the bees, please."
BTW - the song is called B [lyricsfreak.com]
oblig (Score:1)
Sequenced ... really ? (Score:1)
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They are only Region 5 bees if they marry a region 5 bee or wait 3 years for citizenship.
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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, xen
I chime in! (Score:1)