Thursday, September 06, 2007

Sequence of an epidemic

454 has potentially uncovered the cause of colony collapse disorder (CCD) that has been plaguing North American honeybee colonies for a couple of years. 454 has sequencing technology that allowed them to simply sequence collapsed colonies and non-collapsed and compare.
However, one sequence appears particularly significant: that of the Israeli Acute paralysis Paralysis Virus (IAPV), which was only detected in the collapsed colonies.
Hopefully this awesome display of the power of sequencing will help 454 overcome it's embarrassing contamination in their work with the Neanderthal genome.


6 comments:

Bayman said...

Shit. That is a high tech way to test for pathogens.

Bayman said...

Yeah...humans and neanderthals interbreeding. Thant's ridiculous.

Anonymous Coward said...

That's the same technology which recently sequenced the "diploid" genome of god, I mean Craig Venter. his genes were 44% het, so no inbreeding!!! Maybe we could hunt for parasites in his genome...

Bayman said...

Ha! Exploring the Venter-ome!

Bayman said...

Wouldn't be as sweet as cruising around the globe in a yacht though. Unless they shrink you down so you can fit into a nano-submarine and cruise around in that sucker.

Anonymous said...

In soviet Russia, venter sequences you!