蜜蜂全基因组出笼前后

在2006年10月26日,期待已久的蜜蜂的基因组序列在英国杂志《自然》上发表了。这一事件对于全世界蜜蜂生物学家来说,标志着蜜蜂研究“后基因组时代”的开始。这一重大项目由倍乐医学院完成,耗资800万美元,历时2年。而实际上对于基因组的注释又经过近2年的时间,由代表15个国家、来自64个实验室的170名科学家完成。这一等待是值得的基因组序列最终发表后,生物学家通过互联网能做他们自己的“数据采掘”,用这一可得的公共资源验证自己的假说。事实上,在蜜蜂基因组文章在《自然》上发表的当周,其姊妹刊上发表的约50篇相关论文中,有一半以上是基于生物信息学的研究,这些刊物包括《科学》、《基因组研究》、《美国国家科学院院报》及《昆虫分子生物学》。蜜蜂与人类享有一些共性劳动分工,复杂的通信系统包括语言,发达的保卫和防御系统,精妙的建筑以及为了共同利益自我牺牲的特点。由于有这些共性,蜜蜂基因组的发表将使科学家不仅能够深入研究蜜蜂生物学,而且能深入了解我们人类自身的生物学。

The honey bee genome: the untold stories

For honey bee biologists around the world, the “post-genomic era" started with the publication of the honey bee genome in the British journal Nature on Oct 26, 2006. Costing about 8 million US dollars, and about two years to complete, this is a major undertaking by the Baylor College of Medicine. The actual annotation of the genome was done by 170 scientists representing 15 countries and 64 laboratories and took almost another two years. The waiting is worthwhile: finally with the genome published, any biologists with internet access can do their own “data-mining" and test their own hypotheses using the publicly accessible resources. In fact, more than half of the 50 or so papers published the same week as the Nature bee genome paper in the companion journals, which include Science, Proceedings of National Academy of Sciences, Genome Research and Insect Molecular Biology, are based on bioinformatics. Honey bees share many common features as humans: division of labor, elaborate communication systems including languages, guarding and defense systems, architecture and finally self sacrifice to defend their common good. The publication of honey bee genome will enable scientists to learn about honey bee biology as well as our own biology, because of these similarities.