经济学人下载:蜜蜂是最先发明疫苗的物种(2)

In this case, to stop such an infection happening, Dr Harwood and Dr Salmela heat-treated, and so killed, the pathogens in advance. They also labelled the dead bacteria with a fluorescent dye, to make their subsequent fates easy to track. And, sure enough, fluorescent microscopy confirmed that fragments of P. larvae were getting into royal jelly secreted by those bees which had been fed with the laced sugarwater. Moreover, examination of this royal jelly revealed elevated levels, compared with royal jelly from bees that had not been dosed with P. larvae, of an antimicrobial peptide known as defensin-1. This substance is thought to help bee immune systems fend off bacterial infections.

在这种情况下，为了阻止这种感染的发生，哈伍德博士和萨尔梅拉博士事先对病原体进行了热处理并将它们杀死。他们还用荧光染料给死亡的细菌做了标记，以便追踪它们之后的命运。果然，荧光显微镜证实了幼虫芽孢杆菌的碎片进入了那些用加了糖水的蜜蜂分泌的蜂王浆中。而且，荧光显微镜确实证实了幼虫芽孢杆菌的碎片正在进入那些用掺有糖水的蜜蜂分泌的蜂王浆中。这种物质被认为可以帮助蜜蜂免疫系统抵御细菌感染

All told, these findings suggest that nurse bees are indeed, via their royal jelly, passing antigens on to the queen for inoculation into her eggs. They also mean, because larvae, too, receive royal jelly for the first few days after they hatch, that the nurses are inoculating their larval charges as well. Each infant bee is therefore being vaccinated twice.

综上所述，这些发现表明，看护蜂确实通过蜂王浆将抗原传给蚁后，以便将其接种到卵中。这也意味着，因为幼虫在孵化后的头几天也会接受蜂王浆，所以看护蜂也在给它们的幼虫注射疫苗。因此每只幼蜂要接种两次疫苗。

Whether this is simply a belt-and-braces approach, or is actually the equivalent of a prime-boost human vaccination in which the second dose multiplies the effect of the first, remains to be determined. But either way, it seems protective. Not so much herd, as swarm, immunity.

这是一种双保险策略，还是说其实是加强人类免疫的疫苗且第二剂疫苗的效果是第一剂疫苗的两倍，尚未有定论。但不管怎样，这似乎是一种保护。与其说是群体免疫，不如说是蜂群免疫。