UN news: UN success in decoding Tsetze fly genome

protowisdom · Apr 24, 2014

The following news from the UN website reports the success of a UN initiative to decode the Tsetse fly genome.

The UN has a smaller budget than some large American cities, but it does what it can with the resources it has.

http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=47645&Cr=livestock&Cr1=#.U1nUVVcieM8

waltky · Sep 11, 2015

Genome grafting from one plant to another...

Scientists shift medicinal properties from one plant to another
10 Sept.`15 WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A number of important drugs come from plants, but some medicinal plants are endangered or tricky to grow. For some scientists, finding ways to ensure ready access to these drugs has become a priority.

Researchers on Thursday said they have identified the genes that enable an endangered Himalayan plant to produce a chemical vital to making a widely used chemotherapy drug, and inserted them into an easily grown laboratory plant that then produced the same chemical. The endangered plant, called the mayapple, produces a precursor chemical to the chemotherapy drug etoposide, which is used in many patients with lung cancer, testicular cancer, brain cancer, lymphoma, leukemia and other cancers.

The researchers genetically engineered the easily grown laboratory plant Nicotiana benthamiana, a wild relative of tobacco, to make the chemical. "Many plant-based drugs are not found in large quantities in nature and are difficult to make in the lab," said Stanford University chemical engineering professor Elizabeth Sattely, who led the study published in the journal Science. "Mimicking the way nature makes these molecules is a promising alternative, but to do that we need to find the genes. This can be a major challenge because plant genomes can be very large and genes are hard to find," Sattely said.

Stanford chemical engineering professor Elizabeth Sattely explains how she produced a common cancer drug in a laboratory plant, in this undated handout picture courtesy of Stanford University.

The researchers said they discovered six genes from the mayapple plant that in combination with four previously known genes produce the chemical needed to make the chemotherapy drug. "We used these genes to engineer a wild relative of tobacco to make the drug precursor and think we could also use these genes to make the drug in other easy-to-grow organisms such as yeast," Sattely said.

The tobacco plant or yeast would provide the ability to produce the drug in a controlled laboratory setting. Researchers led by another Stanford scientist last month unveiled a new method to make potent painkilling opioids using bioengineered baker's yeast instead of poppies. "Producing plant-derived drugs in easy-to-grow plants or baker's yeast in many cases will be a much more efficient way to make these drugs," Sattely said. "This is currently being done for artemisinin (a malaria drug derived from the sweet wormwood plant), and will likely be the way we make morphine (derived from poppies) in the future."

http://news.yahoo.com/scientists-shift-medicinal-properties-one-plant-another-203036169.html
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waltky · Jul 1, 2017

Granny thinks Uncle Ferd got bit by a tsetse fly `cause he likes to sleep inna hammock alla time...

Tsetse Fly's Weakness May Be Its Symbiotic Bacteria
June 30, 2017 - The fly that carries African sleeping sickness may carry the seeds of its own destruction, according to new research.

Scientists have detailed the unique relationship between the tsetse fly and bacteria in its gut the fly can't live without. The tsetse fly spreads African sleeping sickness to humans from wild animals and has caused several major epidemics in the past. The parasite responsible for sleeping sickness is one of the few pathogens able to pass from the blood into the brain. It disrupts the sleep cycle and leads to mood changes, confusion, tremors and ultimately organ failure. Researchers have long hoped to take advantage of a number of the fly's unusual properties. Like mammals, the tsetse fly lactates and gives birth to live young.

Dead tsetse flies are seen in a laboratory in Ghibe Valley, southwest of Addis Ababa, Ethiopia

The tsetse milk contains bacteria called Wigglesworthia that the mother passes on to its young. Despite having one of the smallest known genomes, Wigglesworthia is a big deal for the tsetse fly. Without it, the fly becomes infertile. In the report published Wednesday in the Proceedings of the Royal Society, researchers from Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, and the University of Pavia in Italy described a number of ways that the tsetse fly depends on Wigglesworthia. The bacteria supply B vitamins that the fly can't produce on its own and doesn't get from blood, its only food source. Without B vitamins, the fly can't properly nourish its young, and they starve.

Proteins' roles

The scientists also examined the tissue that houses the bacteria. The fly produces a special protein that guides the bacteria where they are needed. Another protein hides the bacteria from the fly's immune system. This leaves the researchers with several attack strategies as they move forward. They could try to produce drugs that target Wigglesworthia directly, or unleash the flies' immune system on the bacteria, or block one of the several pathways that the bacteria use to support the fly. "There's a lot of potential places you could throw a wrench into the works," study co-author and entomologist Geoffrey Attardo told VOA. "It's just finding a place that's optimal."

Recent efforts to stem the spread of sleeping sickness have been largely successful. According to the World Health Organization, the number of reported cases fell from almost 40,000 in 1998 to just 2,804 in 2015. But researchers say it is still important to develop new control methods that are cheaper, easier to deploy and more effective. "During epidemics, the political will to address this is there, but then when the disease goes away, the control efforts stop," said Attardo. "Then flies come back in from wild areas, and the cycle starts again. And 20 or 30 years later, you have another epidemic."

https://www.voanews.com/a/tsetse-fly-weakness-symbiotic-bacteria/3923671.html
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See also:

Studies Fuel Dispute Over Whether Banned Pesticides Harm Bees
June 29, 2017 — Two major studies into how bees are affected by a group of pesticides banned in Europe gave mixed results on Thursday, fueling a row over whether the chemicals, called neonicotinoids, are safe.

The studies, one conducted across three European countries and another in Canada, found some negative effects after exposure to neonicotinoids in wild and honeybee populations, but also some positives, depending on the environmental context. Scientists who conducted the European research - in Britain, Hungary and Germany - told reporters their overall findings suggested neonicotinoids are harmful to honeybee and wild bee populations and are "a cause for concern." But scientists representing companies who funded the work - Germany's Bayer AG and Switerland's Syngenta AG - said the results showed "no consistent effect." Several independent experts said the findings were mixed or inconclusive.

The European Union has since 2014 had a moratorium on use of neonicotinoids - made and sold by various companies including Bayer and Syngenta - after lab research pointed to potential risks for bees, crucial for pollinating crops. But crop chemical companies say real-world evidence is not there to blame a global plunge in bee numbers in recent years on neonicotinoid pesticides alone. They argue it is a complex phenomenon due to multiple factors. A spokesman for the EU's food safety watchdog EFSA, said the agency is in the process of assessing all studies and data for a full re-evaluation of neonicotinoids, expected in November.

A bee flies over a sunflower on a field near Frankfurt, Germany

EFSA's scientific assessment will be crucial to a European Commission decision in consultation with EU states on whether the moratorium on neonicotinoid use should remain in place. The two studies published on Thursday, in the peer-reviewed journal Science, are important because they were field studies that sought to examine the real-world exposure of bees to pesticides in nature. Researchers who led the Canadian study concluded that worker bees exposed to neonicotinoids - which they said often came from contaminated pollen from nearby plants, not from treated crops - had lower life expectancies and their colonies were more likely to suffer from a loss of queen bees.

On the findings of the European study, researchers told a briefing in London that exposure to neonicotinoid crops harmed honeybee colonies in two of the three countries and reduced the reproductive success of wild bees across all three. They noted, however, that results from Germany showed a positive effect on bees exposed to neonicotinoids, although they said this was temporary and the reasons behind it were unclear. "This represents the complexity of the real world," said Richard Pywell, a professor at Britain's Center of Ecology and Hydrology who co-led the work. "In certain circumstances, you may have a positive effect ... and in other circumstances you may have a negative effect" Overall, however, he said: "We are showing significant negative effects on [bees'] critical life-cycle stages, which is a cause for concern."

Several specialists with no direct involvement in the study who were asked to assess its findings said they were mixed. Rob Smith, a professor at Britain's University of Huddersfield, said the results were "important in showing that there are detectable effects of neonicotinoid treatments on honeybees in the real world", but added: "These effects are not consistent." Lynn Dicks at the University of East Anglia said the findings "illustrate the complexity of environmental science." "If there was a really big effect of neonicotinoids on bees, in whatever circumstances they were used, it would have shown up in both of these studies," she said. Norman Carreck, an insect expert at Britain's Sussex University, said: "Whilst adding to our knowledge, the study throws up more questions than it answers."

https://www.voanews.com/a/studies-f...her-banned-pesticides-harm-bees-/3921958.html
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trucker · Jul 1, 2017

waltky said: ↑

Granny thinks Uncle Ferd got bit by a tsetse fly `cause he likes to sleep inna hammock alla time...

Tsetse Fly's Weakness May Be Its Symbiotic Bacteria
June 30, 2017 - The fly that carries African sleeping sickness may carry the seeds of its own destruction, according to new research.

See also:

Studies Fuel Dispute Over Whether Banned Pesticides Harm Bees
June 29, 2017 — Two major studies into how bees are affected by a group of pesticides banned in Europe gave mixed results on Thursday, fueling a row over whether the chemicals, called neonicotinoids, are safe.
Click to expand...

but our large populations need to be feed the masses will die off without gmo pesticides?
from russia last week locusts are in plague mode because they dont use GMO crops there

Jeannette · Jul 4, 2017

trucker said: ↑

but our large populations need to be feed the masses will die off without gmo pesticides?
from russia last week locusts are in plague mode because they dont use GMO crops there
Click to expand...

What Russia should do is send Dagestan thousands of containers with strong smelling attractants, that way they can collect as many of the locusts as they can. Afterwards they can crush them and use them as fertilizer or animal feed. It would take time though for the chemists to figure out what kind of scent... or even sound would attract locusts.

I always wondered why some enterprising exterminator didn't start up a cockroach collecting business here in Florida. It would be a lot better than destroying the soil and exposing everyone to poisons. They could easily place containers on certain corners at night, and then collect them in the morning. Afterwards the bugs would be sterilized, crushed and used as fertilizer or animal feed.

It would be great for the environment, but of course the industries that produce the poisons wouldn't allow it.

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