Mechanisms mediating gut microbiome symbiosis in the honey bee

Sunday, November 13, 2022

12:00 PM – 12:15 PM PT

Location: Vancouver Convention Centre, Meeting Room 118

Presenting Author(s)

Waldan Kwong

Group Leader
Instituto Gulbenkian de Ciência
Oeiras, Lisboa, Portugal

Co-author(s)

CC

Claudia Campos

Instituto Gulbenkian de Ciência
Oeiras, Lisboa, Portugal
SA

Samuel Acheampong

Instituto Gulbenkian de Ciência
Oeiras, Lisboa, Portugal
KW

Kang Wang

Yangzhou University
Yangzhou, China (People's Republic)

Social bees, including honey bees and bumble bees, harbour a highly specialized and conserved gut microbial community. Work over the past 10 years has revealed the composition, function, and benefits to the host of these microbes. Here, I will describe projects currently underway in our laboratory that probe in greater detail the relationship between bees and their microbes. For instance, we are using proteomics to identify secreted proteins of the bee microbiome which may be involved in inter-bacterial interactions. We are also performing single-cell transcriptomics to define the cell types in the bee gut and to characterize the cells that mediate communication between the host and the microbiome. I will also outline how our work integrates findings across scales, to understand not only the mechanistic basis of microbial interactions, but also how they evolve and vary across host populations.