Metagenomic detection of viral pathogens in Spanish honeybees: co-infection by Aphid Lethal Paralysis, Israel Acute Paralysis and Lake Sinai Viruses

PLoS One. 2013;8(2):e57459. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0057459. Epub 2013 Feb 27.

Abstract

The situation in Europe concerning honeybees has in recent years become increasingly aggravated with steady decline in populations and/or catastrophic winter losses. This has largely been attributed to the occurrence of a variety of known and "unknown", emerging novel diseases. Previous studies have demonstrated that colonies often can harbour more than one pathogen, making identification of etiological agents with classical methods difficult. By employing an unbiased metagenomic approach, which allows the detection of both unexpected and previously unknown infectious agents, the detection of three viruses, Aphid Lethal Paralysis Virus (ALPV), Israel Acute Paralysis Virus (IAPV), and Lake Sinai Virus (LSV), in honeybees from Spain is reported in this article. The existence of a subgroup of ALPV with the ability to infect bees was only recently reported and this is the first identification of such a strain in Europe. Similarly, LSV appear to be a still unclassified group of viruses with unclear impact on colony health and these viruses have not previously been identified outside of the United States. Furthermore, our study also reveals that these bees carried a plant virus, Turnip Ringspot Virus (TuRSV), potentially serving as important vector organisms. Taken together, these results demonstrate the new possibilities opened up by high-throughput sequencing and metagenomic analysis to study emerging new diseases in domestic and wild animal populations, including honeybees.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Animals
  • Base Sequence
  • Bees / virology*
  • Coinfection / genetics
  • Coinfection / virology
  • Dicistroviridae / genetics
  • Genome, Viral / genetics
  • Insect Viruses / genetics*
  • Lakes
  • Metagenome / genetics*
  • Metagenomics / methods*
  • Phylogeny
  • Sequence Analysis, DNA
  • Spain

Grants and funding

This work was mainly supported by the Award of Excellence (Excellensbidrag), provided to SB by the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SLU), and an FPU grant from the Ministry of Education, Culture and Sports of Spain, which supported MVR and CRG. Special recognition is given to the Ministry of Education of Spain for the FPU grant of Consuelo Rubio-Guerri and Marina Vicente-Rubiano. The work was also partly supported by/executed in the framework of the EU-project AniBioThreat (Grant Agreement: Home/2009/ISEC/AG/191) with the financial support from the Prevention of and Fight against Crime Programme of the European Union, European Commission - Directorate General Home Affairs. This publication reflects the views only of the authors, and the European Commission cannot be held responsible for any use, which may be made of the information contained therein. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.