Allele Frequencies of Genetic Variants Associated with Varroa Drone Brood Resistance (DBR) in Apis mellifera Subspecies across the European Continent.

Autor: Lefebre, Regis, De Smet, Lina, Tehel, Anja, Paxton, Robert J., Bossuyt, Emma, Verbeke, Wim, van Dooremalen, Coby, Ulgezen, Zeynep N., van den Bosch, Trudy, Schaafsma, Famke, Valkenburg, Dirk-Jan, Dall'Olio, Raffaele, Alaux, Cedric, Dezmirean, Daniel S., Giurgiu, Alexandru I., Capela, Nuno, Simões, Sandra, Sousa, José Paulo, Bencsik, Martin, McVeigh, Adam
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Zdroj: Insects (2075-4450); Jun2024, Vol. 15 Issue 6, p419, 18p
Abstrakt: Simple Summary: Increasing honey bee resilience against the parasitic mite Varroa destructor, while respecting sustainability, may be achieved by enriching natural mite resistance traits in the breeding population. Some of these traits are linked to specific variants in the honey bee genome, which can be pinpointed and characterized with high-throughput molecular lab tests. Breeding by focusing on these genomic variants is thus more efficient and less time-consuming. However, when evaluating the link between a specific varroa resistance trait outcome and its associated variants in the genome, different contributions of the variants may be observed between honey bee races. It is hypothesized that these observations evolve from different linkages between the trait-causing genes and the genomic variants. Therefore, we evaluated the presence of genomic variants associated with a varroa resistance trait in different honey bee samples across the European continent. We observed significant differences in the presence of the genomic variants in the considered honey bee races, which underpin our hypothesis of linkage dissimilarities. This study shows that determining the honey bee race prior to using the genomic variants associated with varroa resistance for selective breeding is of utmost importance. Implementation of marker-assisted selection (MAS) in modern beekeeping would improve sustainability, especially in breeding programs aiming for resilience against the parasitic mite Varroa destructor. Selecting honey bee colonies for natural resistance traits, such as brood-intrinsic suppression of varroa mite reproduction, reduces the use of chemical acaricides while respecting local adaptation. In 2019, eight genomic variants associated with varroa non-reproduction in drone brood were discovered in a single colony from the Amsterdam Water Dune population in the Netherlands. Recently, a new study tested the applicability of these eight genetic variants for the same phenotype on a population-wide scale in Flanders, Belgium. As the properties of some variants varied between the two studies, one hypothesized that the difference in genetic ancestry of the sampled colonies may underly these contribution shifts. In order to frame this, we determined the allele frequencies of the eight genetic variants in more than 360 Apis mellifera colonies across the European continent and found that variant type allele frequencies of these variants are primarily related to the A. mellifera subspecies or phylogenetic honey bee lineage. Our results confirm that population-specific genetic markers should always be evaluated in a new population prior to using them in MAS programs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
Databáze: Complementary Index
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