Not going to comment on the specifics of the article, but just wanted to throw something out there: Many plant / animal pathogens are already adapted to one insect or another. Take Malaria, for example, which has mechanisms to escape the mosquito gut, survive and grow in its bloodstream, and travel to the salivary glands. In this case, TRSV was already known to spread via honeybees, so it's just a few steps more for the virus to develop a lethal effect on them. In that context, seems just a bit of a stretch...
It has crossed a yawning chasm ~1.6 billion years wide.
followed by nice. I really don't know anything about pathology, but I did find it strange that the article phrased that particular idea in that way. I mean, there were all those articles about bird flu and swine flu a while back (not to mention the prevalence of chicken pox) so viruses "jumping" from one kind of life form to another doesn't seem all that strange, or at least, no stranger than usual. Anyway, you seem to know something about viruses. If that's so, how might bees be prevented from getting this virus? A vaccine (as administered to humans) doesn't seem like a practical solution and neither does destroying all the bees that have been exposed to the virus and yet, this situation hasn't been presented as one that seems likely to "work itself out" as it were, at least not in the (few) articles I've read about it.It has crossed a yawning chasm ~1.6 billion years wide
seems just a bit of a stretch...
I should say, a related random resource that may interest you is "TB for buffalo" and the efforts to model and control its spread. Unfortunately, bees are a bit harder to test and contain than buffalo.
Damn, neither had I. Modeling TB transmission in Bovine to test the idea of killing off / segregating infected cattle was just one of the first examples systems biology that I learned. Edit: You'll note that the wikipedia page lists "culling" as the treatment.During the first half of the 20th century, M. bovis is estimated to have been responsible for more losses among farm animals than all other infectious diseases combined.
Oh nice, just as antibiotic resistant TB is on the rise.
Heh, I did notice. In my more insensitive moments, I've sometimes wondered if culling (purely in the interest of human survival as a species) would ever be necessary and under what conditions, or even if the human race as it is now would benefit from culls. For example, if antibiotic resistant syphilis spreads and mutates into to something much worse than it already is. I really, really hope that nothing like that ever happens. As for systems biology, both my family and my best-childhood friend's family have a whole lot of biologists and I sometimes think I might have been more interested in bio as a subject if that hadn't been the case. Of course, I wish I had the time to learn a great deal more about biology now, but somehow I don't really see it happening. Still, systems biology looks pretty interesting . . .
Even if you could perfectly predict who is most likely to spread a disease, it still boils down to the trolley problem of whether it's moral to actively kill one person to save the many. And once go down that road, any sort of logical consistency is almost impossible... Never say never! There's plenty of different subjects that touch on biology. The knowledge of my original comment was learned from a public health seminar where no knowledge of chemistry/physics/microbiology was required.I've sometimes wondered if culling (purely in the interest of human survival as a species) would ever be necessary and under what conditions, or even if the human race as it is now would benefit from cull.
Of course, I wish I had the time to learn a great deal more about biology now, but somehow I don't really see it happening.
Virology isn't really my thing, I just happen to know a few random facts and that one line put me on the offensive. I can toss out ideas, but they pretty much ideas killing a lot of bees or burning a lot of tobacco, and I have no idea how effective they would actually be. It's possible that the virus won't find an optimal infectivity to lethality ratio and just die out as it kills too many of its hosts. It's possible that may mean every bee on the plant. Maybe someone will find a viricide that doesn't harm bees. But who knows...like I said, I'm not a virologist :(Anyway, you seem to know something about viruses.
If that's so, how might bees be prevented from getting this virus?