Honey Bees Into Trojan Horses, Rapidly Spreading the Infection to Healthy Hives

To capture the behavior of individual bees, researchers
tagged each one with the equivalent of a QR code and
continuously monitored their interactions. The scientists
were able to simultaneously track the behaviors of as
many as 900 bees.

The system allowed them to track how infection
with IAPV affected the bees’ trophallaxis social
network.


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Israeli acute paralysis virus (IAPV) affects honeybee
hives worldwide and acts by hijacking the host ribosome
for viral protein production through a non-coding RNA
sequences termed IRESs. Cryo-EM studies now reveal
how the IRES captures host ribosomes by mimicking
tRNAs in hybrid configurations to bypass the initiation
step, jumpstarting translation directly to the elongation
phase.


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