We will need to make sure that any artificial RNAi approaches do not interfere with the natural anti-viral RNAi mechanisms in honey bees," Grozinger said. In addition to examining gene expression in virus-infected versus uninfected honey bees, the researchers also scanned the honey bee DNA for extra methylation marks that may have been added or removed from genes in virus-infected bees.
The team found that viral infections do change the pattern of DNA methylation in honey bees, and in a completely different set of genes from the ones in the RNAi pathway.