[Defensins in the honeybee antinfectious protection].

Specific conditions of the honeybee life honeybee life require the presence of effective mechanisms of antiinfectious protection whose one of the most important components are defensins--the family of antimicrobial peptides. In the honeybee, defensins are present in the form of two different peptides--defensin 1 and 2 that are similar between each other only by 55.8 %.

[Local honeybee (Apis mellifera mellifera L.) populations in the Urals].

The COI-COII intergenic region of mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) was studied in local honeybee (Apis mellifera mellifera) L. populations from the Middle and Southern Urals. Analysis of bee colonies in these regions revealed apiaries enriched in families descending from A.

[Polymorphism of locus COI-COII of mitochondrial DNA in the honeybee Apis mellifera L. from southern Ural region].

In spite of high biodiversity within the honeybee species Apis mellifera L., only one geographical race, the dark-colored forest honeybee A. m.

[Use of a PCR method for controlling pure-breeding of honeybees Apis mellifera mellifera L. in the southern Urals].

A key problem of honeybee (Apis mellifera mellifera) breeding in the Southern Urals is its cross-breeding with the Caucasian honeybee Apis mellifera caucasica. Mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) in these subspecies differ in the length of a fragment localized between genes CO-I and CO-II, which can be used as a marker. A pair of 20-mer primers for PCR was chosen by means of computer design in order to determine the fragment size in both of the subspecies.