TIME Magazineさんのインスタグラム写真 - (TIME MagazineInstagram)「American beekeepers lost nearly half their managed bee colonies this year, according to an annual bee survey released by the nonprofit research group Bee Informed Partnership on June 22. It’s a staggering blow for an industry that not only provides honey, but vital pollination services for nearly a third of the fruits and vegetables Americans eat, from blueberries to strawberries, peaches, melons and cucumbers. Climate change, pesticide-laden crops, and declining wild plant biodiversity all play a role in honeybee colony death, but the biggest threat is the varroa destructor, an invasive, parasitic mite smaller than a pin head that nonetheless extracts a big toll from the bees it feeds upon. Varroa mites have plagued beekeepers ever since arriving in the U.S. from Asian honeybees in the mid 1980s, but in recent years, commercially available treatments have lost their efficiency, even as the mite’s viral load increases. But a new tool is in the pipeline: Boston-based biotechnology company Greenlight Biosciences has developed an anti-mite RNA treatment for beehives that uses a similar technology to Pfizer’s breakout COVID-19 vaccine. Only in this case the RNA is used to suppress a protein vital to the reproductive system of the varroa mite, instead of creating a dummy protein designed to prime the human immune response. Link in bio for how the tech behind a COVID vaccine is helping save the bees. Photograph by Peter Essick (@peteressick)」7月6日 22時48分