PHAGE-BACTERIA INTERACTIONS IN HONEY BEE MICROBIOMES: IDENTIFYING FACTORS CONTRIBUTING TO HEALTHY BEES AND DISEASE PREVENTION

One dimension of honey bee health that we know very little about is the role of bacteriophages--viruses that infect bacteria--in affecting the microbial composition of the honey bee microbiome. Bacteriophages are key players in microbial ecosystems and offer a new generation of antibacterials to reduce our overreliance on antibiotics. The overarching goal of this research project is to investigate the interactions that occur between bacteriophages and bacterial pathogens in honey bee microbiomes and to assess their potential in preventing bacterial diseases of honey bees. To this end, we propose three objectives: (1) Identify microbial predictors of foulbrood disease; (2) Characterize the specificity of bacteriophages that infect the bacteria that cause foulbrood and apply evolutionary methods to improve these phages; and (3) Find or evolve phages that are robust against the evolution of phage-resistance in foulbrood. Our proposal adopts a two pronged approach: first, deeply learning about the honey bee microbiome using metagenomics and statistics and, second, applying novel evolutionary methods to improve bacteriophages against foulbood-causing bacteria. The tools and technology developed in this seed grant will foster interdisciplinary collaboration, research infrastructure, and future proposal development.