Honeybees are key to Canada's economy and global food security. However, a fatal parasite called Nosema ceranae has become a pervasive issue for honeybees. The UAlberta iGEM team is developing a detection and treatment system to combat Nosema's devastating effects.
Our 2018 Project: APIS — Last year, we developed the Anti-fungal Porphyrin-based Intervention System (APIS) to treat Nosema ceranae infections. We were able to successfully prototype our system and do preliminary testing in honeybees! However, as we learned more from beekeepers, it became apparent that a bottleneck to effectively treating Nosema ceranae was detecting the parasite.
Our 2019 Project: Bee-tector — To address both treatment and detection, this year we are continuing our work on APIS while also developing our new Bee-tector system, a paper-based detection system for Nosema ceranae. Our detection system would allow for more rapid detection and timely treatment as current methods for detecting Nosema requires specialized training and equipment.