Honeybees harbor antibiotic-resistance genes

Tuesday, October 30, 2012

Bacteria in the guts of honeybees are highly resistant to the antibiotic tetracycline, probably as a result of decades of preventive antibiotic use in domesticated hives. Researchers from Yale University identified eight different tetracycline resistance genes among U.S. honeybees that were exposed to the antibiotic, but the genes were largely absent in bees from countries where such antibiotic use is banned. The study appears on October 30 in mBio?, the online open-access journal of the American Society for Microbiology.

"It [resistance] seems to be everywhere in the U.S.," says Nancy Moran of Yale University, a senior author on the study. "There's a pattern here, where the U.S. has these genes and the others don't."

Honeybees the world over are susceptible to the bacterial disease called "foulbrood", which can wipe out a hive faster than beekeepers can react to the infection. In the U.S., beekeepers have kept the disease at bay with regular preventive applications of the antibiotic oxytetracycline, a compound that closely resembles tetracycline, which is commonly used in humans. Oxytetracycline has been in use among beekeepers since the 1950s, and many genes that confer resistance to oxytetracycline also confer resistance to tetracycline.

Using sensitive molecular techniques, Moran and her colleagues screened honeybees from several locations in the United States and from Switzerland, the Czech Republic, and New Zealand as well as several wild bumblebees from the Czech Republic, for the presence and abundance of tetracycline resistance genes. They found that U.S. honeybees have greater numbers and a more diverse set of tetracycline resistance genes than honeybees from the other countries.

Moran says it is reasonable to expect to see widespread resistance among bees, considering the decades-long use of oxytetracycline in honeybee hives. "It seems likely this reflects a history of using oxytetracycline since the 1950s. It's not terribly surprising. It parallels findings in other domestic animals, like chickens and pigs," says Moran.

Moran notes that beekeepers have long used oxytetracycline to control the bacterium that causes foulbrood, but the pathogen eventually acquired resistance to tetracycline itself. Of the foulbrood pathogens Melissococcus pluton and Paenibacillus larvae, Moran says, "They carry tetL, which is one of the eight resistance genes we found. It's possible that the gene was transferred either from the gut bacteria to the pathogen or from the pathogen to the gut bacteria."

Switzerland, the Czech Republic, and New Zealand do not allow beekeepers to use oxytetracycline in hives, so it is perhaps predictable that honeybees and wild bumblebees from these countries harbored only two or three different resistance genes and only in very low copy numbers, suggesting that the bacteria did not require the genes very frequently.

The authors of the study point out that by encouraging resistance and altering the bacteria that live in honeybee guts, decades of antibiotic applications may have actually been detrimental to honeybee wellbeing. Studies have suggested that the bacterial residents of the honeybee gut play beneficial roles in neutralizing toxins in the bees' diet, nutrition, and in defending the bee against pathogens. By disrupting the honeybee microbiota and reducing its diversity, long-term antibiotic use could weaken honeybee resistance to other diseases. Hence, the treatment that was meant to prevent disease and strengthen the hive may actually weaken its ability to fight off other pathogens.

Moran says while the study is interesting from the perspective of honeybee health and could have implications for how honeybee diseases are managed, the presence of resistance genes in the honeybee gut doesn't pose a direct risk to humans. These gut bacteria, says Moran, "don't actually live in the honey, they live in the bee. We've never actually detected them in the honey. When people are eating honey, they're not eating these bacteria."

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American Society for Microbiology: http://www.asm.org

Thanks to American Society for Microbiology for this article.

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Source: http://www.labspaces.net/124898/Honeybees_harbor_antibiotic_resistance_genes_

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Accused UBS rogue trader: 'I lost control'

LONDON (Reuters) - Former UBS trader Kweku Adoboli told a London court on Tuesday he had "lost control" of his trading in the summer of 2011 but insisted he never acted dishonestly in the frantic weeks that resulted in losses of $2.3 billion.

Adoboli also attacked the culture of investment banks, arguing that compliance rules were "aspirational" and that traders knew they had to bend rules to achieve the goals set by senior management.

The 32-year-old British-educated Ghanaian, who used to be a senior trader on the Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs) desk at UBS's London offices, was arrested on September 15, 2011. He denies two counts of fraud and four of false accounting.

The prosecution says he traded far in excess of his risk limits and concealed his positions with fictitious accounting. Adoboli says everything he did was for the benefit of UBS.

The ex-trader said his troubles started on July 1, 2011, when, under intense pressure from fellow traders and managers, he abandoned a long-standing bearish stance and flipped his trading position to a long one. Just after he did so, the market started to sell off.

"I lost control. The result of that loss of control was an increasing number of breaks (accounting problems), a more frantic trading activity, a less controlled decision-making process," he said.

Later that month, as losses mounted in a volatile market, Adoboli recalled that exhaustion and stress levels reached such a peak that it caused him to briefly break up with his long-term girlfriend.

He said that on the evening of July 23 the couple had been supposed to go out for dinner but he found himself unable to talk to her.

"I went a bit catatonic. I was curled up on my bed. She was asking me what was wrong. I just couldn't explain," he said.

About two weeks later he reunited with his girlfriend and she, over time, persuaded him to stop trying to recoup the losses and open up to someone about his true position.

"In the end she was the strength. She was the person who said to me 'Look, Kwek, if you can't do this, if you can't fix this, then look within yourself and maybe go and tell someone.'

"This is going to kill you. You can't keep fighting this battle that you are clearly not winning," Adoboli quoted his girlfriend as telling him.

He said that by the end of August he came around to her point of view.

"I had told loads of people different stories about what the trades were to buy us more time to recoup the losses. Eventually I accepted that I would have to tell someone about the true nature, the full scale of the losses," he said.

MORE RISKS, MORE PROFIT

In a separate strand of his evidence, Adoboli said he did not believe he had done anything dishonest because he was trying to deliver what UBS management wanted: greater risks in pursuit of greater profits.

He said that in the spring of 2011 the ETFs desk was doing so well that it was held up as an example to other UBS trading desks.

"There were no secrets. There was no hiding. There was no holding back," he said, describing that period.

"We were told to go for it. We went for it. We were told to push the boundaries ... We found the boundary. We found the edge. We fell off the edge and I got arrested," he said.

Adoboli said UBS and investment banks in general set traders unrealistic objectives and everyone knew they could only be met with a certain amount of rule-bending in areas like risk limits.

"The policies were aspirational policies, and on the ground - at the coalface - you had to put in place mechanisms to achieve what you had to achieve," he said.

"In order to achieve what the bank leadership wanted us to achieve, we cannot stick to the policy. We are allowed, it is approved, in reality, that we're going to try to meet in the middle somewhere."

The trial continues. (Editing by Robin Pomeroy)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/accused-ubs-rogue-trader-lost-control-152349105--sector.html

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