Speaker
Description
Social bees, including honey bees and bumble bees, harbour a highly specialized and conserved gut microbial community. This microbiota has been implicated in beneficial roles in nutrient digestion and pathogen resistance. We are studying mechanisms by which these bacteria interact with each other, and with the host, to form a stable symbiotic community. We are using genomic, transcriptomic, and proteomics to investigate secretion systems and the production of membrane vesicles in the bee gut bacteria, which are two ways in which they may interact within the community. I will also describe work in which we are beginning to characterize the “symbiotic compartment” in which these bacteria reside, namely the bee hindgut. Using single-cell transcriptomics, we are examining how gene expression in the hindgut changes over the natural course of development of the bee and during microbial colonization. We identify previously uncharacterized cell types in the hindgut, and spatially localize these cell types using in-situ hybridization. In doing so, we lay the foundation towards a more mechanistic understanding of the symbiosis between bacteria and bees, which also has ecological and economic implications due to their key role as plant pollinators.
