Author
 |
Sylvester, H |
|
Submitted to: Journal of Apicultural Research
Publication Type: Peer Reviewed Journal Publication Acceptance Date: 2/26/2004 Publication Date: N/A Citation: N/A Interpretive Summary: This paper describes a new technique to use molecular markers to identify honey bee stocks,particularly the Primorsky honey bees imported by USDA, ARS, to produce varroa-mite-resistant honey bees. The method, inter-simple sequence repeat restriction fragment length polymorphisms (ISSR-RFLP), can distinguish Primorsky from non-Primorsky stocks of honey bees found in the United States with a high level of probability using DNA markers. This method will allow determination of whether or not a colony of honey bees is of Primorsky stock. It will be useful in distinguishing Primorsky ancestry in stock breeding programs and will be useful for other types of stock identification. It will also be useful in marker-assisted breeding programs to identify DNA markers linked to desirable traits. Technical Abstract: Single microsatellite-anchored primers (SSRs) are used for PCR amplification of inter-simple sequence repeat (ISSR) fragments from honey bee, Apis mellifera L., DNA templates. These fragments are digested with restriction enzymes and the products are examined for differences in the resulting fragment patterns, restriction fragment length polymorphisms (ISSR-RFLPs). Differences were found for eight restriction enzymes with one SSR primer between Primorsky and non-Primorsky honey bees. The combination of the results from the four most distinctive restriction enzymes gave a probability of greater than 90% that unknown Primorsky and non-Primorsky honey bees could be assigned to the correct group for 81% of all honey bees. |
