Save The Bees

As you know, we are very excited about genetic sequencing here at Vestact. That is why we recommend owning shares in Illumina, the leader in sequencing devices. As it turns out, it's not just healthcare where this technology is useful.

This article out of Germany talks about using genomics to save bees. Here is an excerpt from the piece explaining what they are trying to do.

"Brenig and his collaborator, Professor Kaspar Bienefeld from the Institute of Bee Research at Hohen Neuendorf & Humboldt University of Berlin, plan to use comparative whole-genome sequencing, genome-wide association analysis, and epigenomic profiling to unravel differences in honey bees' resistance to parasite infestation."

According to the article, we lost nearly 43.7% of Western Honey Bees in 2019. That sounds drastic. 90% of plants and 75% of crop species rely on pollination by insects. This is clearly an issue that needs fixing. Understanding the genetic makeup of the bee and what they are sensitive to is very important. Of course they are using Illumina machines to process this DNA information.