An economical and effective high-throughput DNA extraction protocol for molecular marker analysis in honeybees.

摘要

The honeybee is becoming an increasingly important organism in the realm of laboratory-based genetics. As honey bee health around the world is declining, measures are being taken to understand the genetic basis of a multitude of traits including behavior, disease resistance, survivability, honey production, and pollination ef?ciency. Quantitative Trait Loci (QTL) studies and mapping projects are elucidating the complex interactions of genetic loci that dictate the important traits being bred for by beekeepers, queen producers, and researchers alike. Quantitative Trait Loci for foraging behavior and aggression were identi?ed nearly 15 years ago (Hunt et al., 1995, 1998), long before the advancements of the current and ongoing honey bee genome project (Honey Bee Genome Sequencing Consortium, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, TX, USA). More recent studies have identi?ed a single QTL for chalkbrood disease resistance (Holloway et al., 2012) and have utilized the genome data to ?ne map the interval to contain just two genes of potential interest (Holloway et al., 2013). As QTL studies are becoming more commonplace in the understanding of honey bee genetics, DNA extraction methods are needing to be faster, more effective, and more economical to keep pace with the analyses of the populations being studied.