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Rna Methylation Lab Report

Decent Essays

The honey bee population is diminishing every year, especially during the winter. There are various factors that have affected this decline such as pesticides, pathogens( Varroa destructor), and antibiotics. Israeli acute paralysis virus(IAPV) is one of the most prevalent viruses in weak colonies that do not survive the winter. Antiviral responses can be followed by either the Janus kinase- signal transducers and activators of transcription pathway or the RNA Interference (RNAi) pathways. These responses follow various steps to avoid total infection; for RNAi, the RNA is split into many pieces and find the mRNA with the same sequence. The one used in this study is the RNAi pathway and DNA methylation. These epigenetic mechanisms can modify DNA and RNA sequences without altering the original sequence. The DNA methylation happens in the bee’s gene body. Question. In this experiment DNA methylation will be studied with honey bees that have IAPV. They will be focusing on body fat tissue, metabolism sites, and in immunity to discover if …show more content…

In this experiment it was shown that the DNA methylation is inversely correlated with the expression of the genes, IAPV. The longer the stain the less methylated it was. It also shows the honey bee response is different from human response that had been studied. Implication. This experiment shows that there is a correlation of IAPV with the decreasing number of bees during the winter. This is proved by the molecular studies. Further studies need to be conducted on the molecular aspect. Interesting facts. It was found that as a faster immune response to the virus RNA polymerase II gets paused. Weaknesses. The study was done on a very limited number of hives. The bees were not exposed to their natural conditions in the incubator. Relevance to project. This is relevant to my project because I will be working with honey bee while doing molecular studies. This gives me insight to the molecular aspect of the

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