Unlike humans, there aren’t any anti-vaxxers amongst the bee population, as the pollinating insects naturally immunize their offspring against specific diseases found in their environment – and now researchers have discovered for the first time exactly how they do it.
Writing in the latest edition of the journal PLOS Pathogens, scientists from the Arizona State University and an international team of colleagues report that vitellogenin, a protein found in bee blood, plays a critical but previously undiscovered role in disease immunity transmission.
“The process by which bees transfer immunity to their babies was a big mystery until now,” Gro Amdam, co-author of the study and a professor at the ASU’s School of Life Sciences, explained in a statement. “What we found is that it’s as simple as eating. Our amazing discovery was made possible because of 15 years of basic research on vitellogenin.”
Vitellogenin carries bacteria fragments through the body
Since a queen bee rarely leaves the nest, a colony’s worker bees bring food to her, Amdam and her colleagues said. These bees can pick up pathogens while out collecting nectar and pollen, and once this pollen is returned to the hive, it is used to create a food known as “royal jelly.”
That royal jelly contains bacteria from the outside environment, and once the microbes are eaten, they are digested in the queen’s gut and transferred to a body cavity, where they are stored in the “fat body” (an organ similar to a liver). Fragments of the bacteria are then bound to vitellogenin, and the protein is carried through the blood and into the developing eggs.
This process allows baby bees to be born “vaccinated” from the pathogens, making it so that their immune systems are better prepared for dealing with environmental diseases after they are born. Prior to this new study, scientists did not know that vitellogenin acted as the carrier of the immune-priming signals that make all of this possible, the researchers said.
Now that Amdam’s team understands how bees vaccinate their offspring, they are looking to use this information to develop the first edible, natural vaccine for insects. These vaccines could play a key role in combating colony collapse disorder, and since pollinators are essential to food production, the immunization would ultimately benefit humans as well, they added.
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Feature Image: Thinkstock
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