Honeybees (Apis mellifera) provide pollination services that are crucial for food crops and agriculture. However, declines in insect pollinators, including honeybees, have raised concerns worldwide. Diseases and parasites are among the major factors affecting pollinator health. In particular, the devastating invasive parasitic mite (Varroa distructor) has the greatest impact globally; this parasitic mite has also an indirect negative impact by spreading viral diseases either through the saliva or through weakening bees' immune system, thus leading to the reactivation of latent viral infections. Unraveling the health status of honeybees and the diversity of viral diseases is extremely important for managing diseases and improving the health of the colonies. In this respect, Next-Generation Sequencing (NGS) technologies are useful tools for metagenomic studies and to characterize the virome associated to honeybees. In the present work, we used the High-Throughput Sequencing (HTS) approach to examine the RNA virome from different pooled samples from diseased honey beescollected in Italy. Total RNA was purified using TRI zol reagent and used to construct Illumina TruSeq RNA libraries, which were then sequenced by 2 × 100 bp paired-end reads, generating more than 30 million reads for each library. Bioinformatic analyses showed the occurrence of several viruses belonging to different genera, such as Ifla virus, Triato virus, Sinai virus, Partiti virus, Adenovirus, phycodna virus, Ilar virus, Capillo virus, and others unclassified. The number of detected viruses in our samples was remarkable, suggesting that viruses could be one of the major threats to the Italian apiculture. Furthermore, the application of HTS technology proved to be a very successful and rapid tool for discovering viruses in honeybees.
Metagenomic studies for detection of Honeybees viruses
Giampetruzzi A;Saponari M
2020
Abstract
Honeybees (Apis mellifera) provide pollination services that are crucial for food crops and agriculture. However, declines in insect pollinators, including honeybees, have raised concerns worldwide. Diseases and parasites are among the major factors affecting pollinator health. In particular, the devastating invasive parasitic mite (Varroa distructor) has the greatest impact globally; this parasitic mite has also an indirect negative impact by spreading viral diseases either through the saliva or through weakening bees' immune system, thus leading to the reactivation of latent viral infections. Unraveling the health status of honeybees and the diversity of viral diseases is extremely important for managing diseases and improving the health of the colonies. In this respect, Next-Generation Sequencing (NGS) technologies are useful tools for metagenomic studies and to characterize the virome associated to honeybees. In the present work, we used the High-Throughput Sequencing (HTS) approach to examine the RNA virome from different pooled samples from diseased honey beescollected in Italy. Total RNA was purified using TRI zol reagent and used to construct Illumina TruSeq RNA libraries, which were then sequenced by 2 × 100 bp paired-end reads, generating more than 30 million reads for each library. Bioinformatic analyses showed the occurrence of several viruses belonging to different genera, such as Ifla virus, Triato virus, Sinai virus, Partiti virus, Adenovirus, phycodna virus, Ilar virus, Capillo virus, and others unclassified. The number of detected viruses in our samples was remarkable, suggesting that viruses could be one of the major threats to the Italian apiculture. Furthermore, the application of HTS technology proved to be a very successful and rapid tool for discovering viruses in honeybees.I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.
