Shotgun metagenomics of honey DNA: Evaluation of a methodological approach to describe a multi-kingdom honey bee derived environmental DNA signature.

ABSTRACT: Honey bees are considered large-scale monitoring tools due to their environmental exploration and foraging activities. Traces of these activities can be recovered in the honey that also may reflect the hive ecological micro-conditions in which it has been produced. This study applied a next generation sequencing platform (Ion Torrent) for shotgun metagenomic analysis of honey environmental DNA (eDNA). The study tested a methodological framework to interpret DNA sequence information useful to describe the complex ecosystems of the honey bee colony superorganism, its pathosphere and the heterogeneity of the agroecological environments and environmental sources that left DNA marks in the honey. Analysis of two honeys reported sequence reads from five main organism groups (kingdoms or phyla):

SUBMITTER: Bovo S 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6209200 | biostudies-literature | 2018

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature