Engineering Gut Symbionts: A Way to Promote Bee Growth?

Abstract

Bees play a crucial role as pollinators, contributing significantly to ecosystems. However, the honeybee population faces challenges such as global warming, pesticide use, and pathogenic microorganisms. Promoting bee growth using several approaches is therefore crucial for maintaining their roles. To this end, the bacterial microbiota is well-known for its native role in supporting bee growth in several respects. Maximizing the capabilities of these microorganisms holds the theoretical potential to promote the growth of bees. Recent advancements have made it feasible to achieve this enhancement through the application of genetic engineering. In this review, we present the roles of gut symbionts in promoting bee growth and collectively summarize the engineering approaches that would be needed for future applications. Particularly, as the engineering of bee gut symbionts has not been advanced, the dominant gut symbiotic bacteria Snodgrassella alvi and Gilliamella apicola are the main focus of the paper, along with other dominant species. Moreover, we propose engineering strategies that will allow for the improvement in bee growth with listed gene targets for modification to further encourage the use of engineered gut symbionts to promote bee growth.

Keywords: detoxification; digestion; genetic engineering; gut symbionts; honeybee.

Figure 1

Proposed strategies to engineer bee gut symbionts for growth promotion through (a) expression of genes involved in digestion (i.e., PL1 and manA) and pesticide detoxification (i.e., est, anhD, anhE, anhA, opd and mpd) and (b) manipulation of metabolic cross-feeding at community level.