These responses were revealed in earlier days through studying bacterial and fungal pathogens that can be visible under microscopes, leading to intuitive identifications of pathogens and host immune responses. Isolation of bacteria and fungi were well-developed and have been applied to studying the anti-microbial activities of insects. In contrast, these research tools were unavailable for virus-related immune responses, slowing research progress. However, antiviral responses in bees are critical in studies addressing virus diseases and their impacts on population decline. Moreover, insect antiviral immune responses are difficult to predict using gene sequences because of the high diversity in both hosts and viruses. Although the honey bee genome is relatively well-annotated, research outcomes from Drosophila or Anopheles insects may not be able to find a direct link in bees using sequence similarities. De novo studies are still required in many scenarios.
In this research topic, McMenamin et al. identified a novel protein, Bap1, involved in honey bee antiviral responses using transcriptomic methods and the Sindbis virus as a Spain phone number list surrogate virus for in vivo infection studies. Bap1 is not ubiquitous in insects, and the closest orthology was identified in cockroaches, not in more closely related insects but interestingly also infected by DWV (Vršanský et al., 2019). In summary, research articles on this research topic reported the findings of DWV subtypes and a novel antiviral protein, Bap1. More novel antiviral proteins could soon be identified with the protocols for Bap1 identification, and the availability of laboratory synthesized viral clones.
With fluorescence labels (Jin et al. 2020; Ryabov et al. 2020). In addition, the emergence and evolution of DWV subtypes remain to be fully understood. Whether subtype competition leads to stable levels is not yet known. It will be intriguing to find DWV subtype replacement events or the evolution of novel subtypes in the future.The World Health Organization (WHO) released new Global Air Quality Guidelines (AQG) in 2021. These AQG reflect the large impacts that air pollution has on global health. They are based on comprehensive syntheses of the overwhelming body of evidence that has accumulated over the past two decades, demonstrating that health effects of air pollution are serious and can affect nearly all organ systems of the human body.