Program Item Details
TITLE: Matthew Bryman, Project Manager, Mountain Pine Beetle Genomics Project, Genome Alberta and Dr. Janice Cooke, Assistant Professor, Biological Sciences, University of Alberta
SUBJECT: #251 Mountain Pine Beetle Genomics Project
SYNOPSIS: ..
AUDIO: Download Audio (mp3 format)
TRANSCRIPT:
#251 January 12, 2008
Interview starts at 11:48
Intro: They say it takes two to tango. But in the case of the mountain pine beetle that’s threatening western forests, that little dance number requires a threesome.
There’s the beetle, the pine tree, of course, and the third dance partner is the fungus that shadows the beetle wherever it moves.
Uncovering the genomic relationship between those three factors is at the heart of a new project funded by Genome Alberta. Lead investigator is Dr. Janice Cooke, an expert in forest genomics at the University of Alberta. And Project Manager is plant physiologist, Matthew Bryman.
Dr. Janice Cooke and Matthew Bryman
MB: The project I’m involved in is called the Mountain Pine Beetle Genomics project. So what we’re going to do is taking a look at something that’s really becoming near and dear to a lot of Albertan’s hearts and that’s the recent invasion of a small grain of rice size beetle from BC into Alberta that’s affecting the pine forests there. We’re going to take a look at it in association with the fungus that it brings along and see how it works, the three of them actually work together to bring down a lot of the pine forests that are in Alberta too.
CC: NOW THE FUNDING FOR THIS PROJECT COMES FROM GENOME ALBERTA. WHAT IS GENOME ALBERTA INTERESTED IN?
MB: What Genome Alberta, I think, wants to do is bring the genomics and genetics tools that are here to bear on a question of really ecological significance in Alberta, something novel and something new and get a marriage of the genetics and the genomics tools with the life sciences that are here in Alberta.
CC: JANICE, YOU’RE THE ARCHITECT OF THIS PROJECT. WHAT IS IT THAT YOU WERE LOOKING AT?
JC: This is a really interesting complex biological issue. The association of these mountain pine beetles, their fungal associates with pine trees, not even just one pine species but multiple pine species, presents such a complex biological question.
So my interest in this complex biological question was really, could we use genomics technology, genomics tools to bring novel insight into the interactions of these three partners in this ecological question. And so last year when we were developing this project, we decided that we could bring genomics technology to bear, to bring new insight into this ecological, economically important issue.
CC: WHAT’S DIFFERENT ABOUT YOUR APPROACH AS OPPOSED TO WHAT’S GONE ON ELSEWHERE?
JC: Research into mountain pine beetle has been going on for many decades. Much of that research has been carried out on a shoestring budget. And so as a consequence, often times that research is focused on one aspect of this complex biological interaction.
People have looked at the mountain pine beetle. They’ve looked at the trees response to mountain pine beetle. In some cases, they’ve even looked at the fungi associated with the beetle that ultimately results in the demise of the tree. But very rarely have researchers had the technology, the means the financial means, to look at all three of these interacting partners in a comprehensive way.
And so, that’s really, I think, the novel aspect of our project. That with the new technologies that are available, we are able to look simultaneously at these three interacting partners.
CC: WHAT WILL THAT GIVE YOU THEN TAKING THIS APPROACH?
JC: I think it’s a more holistic picture of how the beetle is interacting with the tree, what the tree is offering to the beetle. The beetle is not only being hosted by the tree. The tree is a hotel for the beetle. But the beetle is also eating the tree. The tree is the beetle’s buffet.
And so, what we can do then is look at the functional relationships between the beetle and the tree. So the tree’s defense response against the beetle in various climates and the beetles response to these defense responses.
And all of this is being tied together by these pesky little fungi. These fungi that do the tree in, but service the beetle. They think that the fungi provides nutrition to the beetle, makes a more palatable environment within the tree. We can look at those interactions and instead of treating the beetle and the fungi and the tree as black boxes, we can use genomic technologies, the gene sequences of these creatures to really ask questions about function and interactions. We can look inside them. We can open up that black box and say, what’s going on inside that beetle? How is it really responding?
CC: AND WHAT WOULD BE THE IMPORTANCE OF GETTING THAT INFORMATION? WHAT’S IT GOING TO TELL YOU...AS A MANAGER?
JC: So, right now, decisions are being made by the province using decision support tools which are essentially mathematical models that tell them something about the risk being posed to Alberta’s forests by these beetles. And while these models have served a certain purpose, they’re not parameterized using data about how beetles are functioning here in Alberta. And they don’t really include a lot of data, for example, about the fungi. They really don’t include much data about the trees.
And so what we’re hoping to do is to provide insight into how these trees are responding, how the beetles are moving through the province, how these populations may differ from north to south, for example. And provide this really Mercedes level data to provincial managers that are using these models, to help them better estimate risk.
CC: IS THE ALBERTA FOREST THEN DIFFERENT FROM OTHER AREAS THAT HAVE HAD HEAVY INFESTATIONS OF PINE BEETLE, SAY BC OR DOWN IN THE STATES?
JC: Well, in fact, our forests really are unique. If we look at our western neighbour, in BC, for example, their forests obtain a lot more annual precipitation than Alberta forests. We live in a very dry environment, a very harsh environment. These trees are under chronic stress. They’re adapted to this stress. But they present a very different buffet to these incoming beetles than do trees in BC. So, one of the chief questions we want to address is how are a tree’s defenses altered in Alberta’s harsh environment? Does it affect the success of beetle attack?
So rather than simply looking at the exterior of the tree, we can ask what kind of defense response does it mount by looking at gene expression patterns.
CC: MATT, WHAT WORK HAS BEEN DONE SO FAR ON THIS PROJECT?
MB: Well to begin with, there’s been a lot of sampling going on to take a look at the beetles, the fungi that are there and the trees across a whole range of areas. Some from our western neighbour in BC, some of the early areas where the beetle has actually been able to cross the Rockies and enter Alberta, as well as from some of the areas where it actually has NOT reached as well.
Take a look at some of the things that are going on as a way to see how the beetles might be able to progress from area to area to area.
CC: ONCE YOU COLLECT THOSE SAMPLES, AND I BET THERE’S LIKE THOUSANDS OF THEM, WHAT HAPPENS TO THEM THEN? HOW DO YOU GET THE GENOMIC INFORMATION OUT OF THAT?
MB: Well what we actually need to do is extract the DNA from them. So that will involve, for example, with the beetles, taking portions of the beetle tissue, grinding it up, extracting the DNA from it. As well, we need to take the fungi and culture them as well so we can obtain individual representations of the fungi that are there. We’ll do the same type of genomic extractions from them and the same from the trees. We want to get as much information out of all three as we possibly can.
CC: JANICE, IF YOU’RE LOOKING AT THE DNA AND THE GENE INFORMATION THAT’S COMING FROM THE TREES, THE BEETLES AND THE FUNGI, AND YOU’RE ALSO LOOKING AT THE DIFFERENCES BETWEEN THE ALBERTA FOREST AND BC AND THESE OTHER PLACES, WHAT IS THAT INFORMATION GOING TO TELL YOU? ARE YOU LOOKING AT ADAPTATION AND EVOLUTION?
JC: We’re really interested in understanding adaptation. So we know that over the past hundred years, since Europeans have settled in the western provinces, that there’s been a marked march north of these mountain pine beetles.
Mountain pine beetle outbreaks have been occurring for many, many, many years-- millennia. We know that there was a vast outbreak in southern BC in the 1920’s, for example. We know there were outbreaks in the 1950’s. There outbreaks in the 1980’s.
This outbreak is occurring at more northern reaches than ever before. And so, there are people who really feel that this is a sign of having had milder winters over the past decade or two decades.
But the question also remains, are these beetles becoming more adapted to northern climates? Are they able to complete their life cycles more quickly, for example? And so this becomes a question of selective pressure. Are we seeing a selection of beetles that are perhaps more capable of surviving in Canada’s north?
And so using genomics tools, we have for the first time now the ability to ask those kinds of questions. And so we’re embarking now on molecular marker development using gene sequences. That’s a major push in our present project.
And so, we feel by the end of the project we will have a suite of molecular markers that can be used to test the hypothesis: ‘Are beetles, in fact, becoming more adapted to Canada’s north?’
CC: MATT, WHO ALL IS INVOLVED IN THIS PROJECT?
MB: Well we’ve been lucky in that we’ve been able to bring quite a diverse group to bear on this complex issue. And what it’s done is, it’s really married a lot of disciplines in science that really aren’t used a lot.
So when you talk about that, you think of things like we’re bringing ecology and a lot field work and chemical ecology into genetics and genomics tools. We’re bringing mathematicians and mathematical models and we’re integrating that with a lot of the biological sciences in all the groups that I just said.
So these are a lot of groups that typically may not talk to one another on any given day and the ability to bring them together and do this work is one of the things that makes it so novel.
CC: WHAT’S AHEAD OVER THE NEXT FEW MONTHS?
MB: We need to continue our sampling and make sure we get as much information as we can, especially during these winter periods to see how the beetles are actually overwintering here in Alberta. Then when we’re able to actually go in and get a lot of the DNA, we need to start our analysis on it, and as Janice had been mentioning, see where we can go with this molecular marker development.
We still have a long way to go and we’re just in the infancy of the project.
CC: JANICE, HAVE YOU FOUND OUT ANYTHING SO FAR?
JC: The major discovery that we’ve made so far is this idea that these beetles are, in fact, surviving in areas where we might not have expected. But on the other hand, we’ve seen that small environmental influences, even just a small cold snap in November can have a marked effect on the populations out there.
So I think by having our field crews out on a weekly basis over this past year has really given us, on the ground, insight into this beetle that has allowed us to refine our hypotheses and develop very specific questions that we now can address with these genomic tools. If we had not had that time on the ground, I think that our questions that we’re now addressing in the lab using experimental approaches may have been more naive.
CC: WHAT DO YOU WANT THE END RESULT TO BE?
JC: When all is said and done, with the data and the analysis that we hope to do over the next two to four years, I think we have two major outcomes that if we do have those outcomes come to fruition, I will be really happy.
The first is that with the modeling team that we have associated with the project, we hope to have new models put in place that are able to assess mountain pine beetle risk here in Alberta to a much better degree of confidence than we presently have.
The models that we have now have served a purpose but we really strongly believe that models that are parameterized with data that come from the genomics project will really be Ferraris. We really feel that they will help forest managers really assess the risk to a much greater degree of confidence than we can do today.
The second will be a suite of molecular markers, gene based molecular markers, that will really allow us to ask novel questions about adaptation. We’re going to be able to get at that in this present round of funding with this present project. But we’re really setting up for a future, a really bright future, to look at questions about real time adaptation. And that’s really exciting.
CC: MATT?
MB: If I could add one thing to what Janice is saying, we’re taking a problem that with the mountain pine beetle that’s been known for awhile, but really with these models that are being developed, what I think we’re hoping also to put into place is strategies that could potentially be applied to any other type of pest that might come along.
Once these things are already in place, it’s a lot easier to adapt them and to grow them so they can work in a wide variety of situations. So it’s really a forward thinking approach that’s being brought to bear here.
CC: THANK YOU VERY MUCH, MATT.
BM: Thank you, CHERYL
CC: THANK YOU VERY MUCH, JANICE.
JC: Thank you
Dr. Janice Cooke, is an assistant Professor in Biological Sciences at the University of Alberta and lead investigator in the Genome Alberta Mountain Pine Beetle Genomics Project. I also spoke with Project Manager, Matthew Bryman.
FEATURED LINK: Genome Alberta
FEATURED LINK: News Release