The influence of Bt-transgenic maize pollen on the bacterial diversity in the midgut of Apis mellifera ligustica
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Original article
The influence of Bt-transgenic maize pollen on the bacterial diversity in the midgut of Apis mellifera ligustica Li-Li GENG1 , Hong-Juan CUI1 , Ping-Li DAI2 , Zhi-Hong LANG3 , Chang-Long SHU1 , Ting ZHOU2 , Fu-Ping SONG1 , Jie ZHANG1 1
State Key Laboratory for Biology of Plant Diseases and Insect Pests, Institute of Plant Protection, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Beijing 100193, People’s Republic of China 2 Key Laboratory of Pollinating Insect Biology, Ministry of Agriculture, Institute of Apicultural Research, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Beijing 100093, People’s Republic of China 3 Biotechnology Research Institute, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Beijing 100081, People’s Republic of China Received 8 June 2012 – Revised 5 September 2012 – Accepted 2 October 2012
Abstract – Honeybees are subjected to direct contact with transgenic maize pollen due to their feeding activities on pollen. The potential side effects of transgenic cry1Ah-maize pollen on the midgut bacteria of the larvae and worker bees of Apis mellifera ligustica were investigated through denaturing gradient gel electrophoresis under both laboratory and field conditions. Newly emerged bees were fed transgenic cry1Ahmaize pollen, normal maize pollen, linear cry1Ah gene DNA, supercoiled plasmid DNA, and sugar syrup under the laboratory conditions. The results showed that there were no significant differences in the midgut bacterial community composition among the five treatments. No significant effects were observed in the midgut communities between larvae and adult honeybees fed transgenic cry1Ah-maize pollen and non-transgenic maize pollen in the field trials. transgenic maize / Apis mellifera / intestinal community / denaturing gradient gel electrophoresis
1. INTRODUCTION Accumulated hectarage of genetically modified crops planted globally from 1996 to 2011 exceeds 1.6 billion ha (Clive 2012). Planting Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) crops effectively reduces the pesticide use by 443 million kg of active ingredient and has brought $34.2 billion in economic benefits to date. In 2011, biotech maize covered 51 million ha and 32 % of the global biotech area, and it was the second largest Li-Li Geng and Hong-Juan Cui contributed equally to this work. Corresponding author: J. Zhang, [email protected] Manuscript editor: Monique Gauthier
planted crop after cotton. However, the worldwide planting of Bt maize has triggered concerns about their potential impacts on the environment and human health. The main concern is the harmful effects that these crops may exert on nontarget organisms. Many studies demonstrate that transgenic maize with cry1Ab, cry1F, or cry3Bb gene do not exert harmful effects on nontarget arthropod (Gathmann et al. 2006; Higgins et al. 2009; Al-Deeb et al. 2003) and rhizosphere soil bacterial communities (Baumgarte and Tebbe 2005; Blackwood and Buyer 2004). The endophytic bacterial communities of maize were not significantly affected by transforming with cry3Bb1, cry1A105, or cry1Ab2 gene (
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