The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) has approved the world’s first insect vaccine developed to protect bees from a devastating bacterial disease known to destroy entire hives.
The insect immune system is highly effective in targeting and eliminating pathogens. However, unlike humans and other vertebrates, insects lack an adaptive antibody-driven immune response. This has led many scientists to suggest that it may be impossible to develop vaccines for insects.
A few years ago, Dialial Freitak at the University of Helsinki made a big breakthrough. It has been known that immunity to specific pathogens is transferred from insect females to their offspring, but the precise molecular mechanism was unknown.
Freitak and colleagues discovered that an important egg yolk protein called vitellogenin is the intergenerational transport mechanism of immunity in insects. This fundamental discovery laid the groundwork for a new class of insect vaccines, and the team’s first target was honeybees.
In the years that followed, researchers developed a vaccine that targeted a disease called foul broadbroad in the United States.the disease is caused by Paenibacillus larvae Once bacteria have established themselves in a bee population, often the only option is to destroy the colony completely. It is then transferred directly to the larvae.
“The vaccine is incorporated into royal jelly by the worker bees and fed to the queen bee,” explains a statement from developer Tairan Animal Health. “She ingests it and fragments of the vaccine are deposited in her ovaries. Larvae exposed to the vaccine gain immunity when they hatch.”
Successful placebo-controlled clinical trials have shown the vaccine to be safe and effective. Vaccinated queen bee offspring are less susceptible to bacterial disease than unvaccinated offspring. I was.
Speaking to The Guardian, entomologist Keith Delaplane envisions a system that could vaccinate the queen bee before it is transported to a new hive. And whole colonies are founded by vaccinated queens.
“In a perfect scenario, the queen bee could be given a cocktail of Queen Candy, the soft, pasty sugar that the queen bee eats during her migration,” says Freitak in Dalan, working with Freitak to help develop a vaccine. “Queen bee breeders can advertise ‘fully vaccinated queens,'” says Delaplane.
The US Department of Agriculture’s approval of the new vaccine marks the first time an insect vaccine has been approved for use in the United States. And for Freitak, it’s just the first in a series of entirely new insect vaccines to help improve the health of bees that pollinate crops and other beneficial insects.
“Once we tackle bee diseases, we hope to provide solutions for other commercially used pollinators, such as bumblebees and other beneficial insects. to provide innovative solutions to insect health to promote.”
Source: Dalang Animal Health
