Compositions for conferring tolerance to viral disease in social insects, and the use thereof
AssigneeBeeologics Inc.
InventorsNitzan Paldi, Gal Yarden
Life of this patent
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Abstract
Compositions and methods for reducing susceptibility to infectious disease in bees using RNA interference technology, and more particularly, prevention and treatment of viral infections in honeybees such as Israel acute paralysis virus (IAPV) by feeding of pathogen-specific dsRNA. Further, multiple-pathogen specific dsRNA is disclosed.
Claims19
A method for increasing the tolerance of an adult bee to a disease caused by at least one bee pathogen, comprising feeding the adult bee an effective amount of a bee-ingestible composition comprising bee feed and a double stranded ribonucleic acid (dsRNA) comprising an RNA sequence capable of hybridizing to an mRNA transcript encoding a polypeptide or an RNA target sequence of the at least one bee pathogen, thereby increasing the tolerance of the adult bee to the disease, wherein the dsRNA is a naked dsRNA and the bee-ingestible composition does not comprise a transfection promoting agent.
A bee-ingestible composition comprising bee feed and a double stranded ribonucleic acid (dsRNA) comprising an RNA sequence capable of hybridizing to an mRNA transcript encoding a polypeptide or an RNA target sequence of at least one bee pathogen,
- wherein the dsRNA comprises an RNA sequence that is complementary to at least 21 nucleotides of a nucleotide sequence set forth in SEQ ID NO:24, SEQ ID NO:47, or SEQ ID NO:50, and
- wherein the dsRNA is a naked dsRNA and the bee-ingestible composition does not comprise a transfection promoting agent, and whereby an adult bee fed with the bee-ingestible composition increases its tolerance to a disease caused by the at least one bee pathogen.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.