BAYER BEE CARE CENTERPopulations of honeybees have crashed in recent years, and many researchers have pointed the blame at a class of widely used insecticides called neonicotinoids. But studies have shown that not all the compounds are equally toxic to these critical pollinators, suggesting that there might be variation in how the insects metabolize them.
Now, a team of academic and industry scientists in Europe have traced this differing sensitivity to an enzyme in the cytochrome P450 superfamily of proteins that can metabolize at least one neonicotinoid into a less toxic derivative. The findings, published today (March 22) in Current Biology, raise the possibility of identifying bee-friendly pesticides based on their vulnerability to detoxification via this mechanism.
“They’ve provided an incredibly useful service in illuminating how honeybees process toxins,” says May Berenbaum, an entomologist at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign who was not involved in the work. Given bees’ routine exposures to pesticides as they forage for food and pollinate crops, “it’s incredibly important to know this.”
Neonicotinoids target nicotinic acetylcholine receptors (nAChRs) in the insect central nervous system. ...
