Beenome Soon: Honey Bees as a Model ‘Non-Model’ System for Comparative Genomics

While the explosion of genomic data and tools is fully apparent for model organisms, these tools are arguably changing paradigms most quickly in those species for which genetic studies are most challenging. One such species is the honey bee, Apis mellifera. New tools and resources for this species (e.g. [2,17]), an impending genome-sequencing project and new interdisciplinary teams will help bring the unique traits of honey bees into the world of comparative genomics. Several factors make honey bees a compelling choice for genomic studies. First, bees are outstanding experimental subjects for animal behaviour and learning, thanks to a well-known reward system [12], symbolic language [9,16] and phenomenal learning abilities [13]. Honey bees and other social insects also provide extreme examples of developmental switches, or polyphenisms — the generation of distinct phenotypes from an equivalent genetic background [5,6]. Associated with this switch are two traits that pique the interest of medical researchers — fertility and longevity. While workers are nearly sterile, queens lay hundreds of thousands of eggs each year, and live 10–20 times longer than workers. The causes and consequences of the queen–worker split, long known from the standpoint of nutrition, are ripe for genomic analyses. Honey bees also show promise as a unique disease model. Since their domestication several thousand years ago, it has been recognized that bees are targeted by many of the same pests that affect human health, viz. viruses, protozoa, bacteria, fungi and other arthropods. Given this range of pathogens and a living environment that resembles culture media in humidity, warmth and available nutrients, honey bee colonies remain remarkably refractory to disease. Genomic studies clarifying how honey bees tolerate and resist disease offer exciting parallels both with other insects, such as Drosophila [4,8] and Anopheles [3], and with mammalian systems. Bees and other social insects provide an important twist on the study of disease, by allowing investigations of social elements in both the transmission and progression of disease (e.g. in termites, where diseases can be slowed by an emergent ‘social immunity’ caused by contact between nestmates [15]). Bees also have direct effects on human health, and genetic studies are beginning to unravel the bases of both foraging behaviour [1,11] and aggressive behaviour [7], showing fascinating parallels with Drosophila and other model organisms. While the collective knowledge from thousands of years of bee breeding and research has given