Gopika Bhasi to be the savoir of bees
Jayaprakash Kesavan.
Bees are well known for their role in pollination, which is essential for the reproduction of terrestrial plants. Without pollination, many plant species on Earth would disappear. Therefore, the destruction of bees will lead to the destruction of the human race itself. Gopika Bhasi, a native of Guruvayur, is currently studying the pathogens that affect bees and their spread.
Gopika is a third-year PhD student at the Agri-bio Solutions Laboratory, Department of Animal, Plant and Soil Science, La Trobe University, Australia. Gopika bhasi is the first recipient of the 2020 Shah Rukh Khan – La Trobe University PhD Fellowship. Gopika is now at the forefront of bee health research, despite travel and research delays to Australia in 2020 due to the global Covid-19 pandemic. Gopika utilizes state-of-the-art environmental DNA monitoring technology to detect bee-infecting pathogens from different honey samples. It is a method of observing samples of biological resources in nature. This method reduces the cost and duration of research.
As part of this, Gopika collected 135 honey samples from different parts of Australia. They were analyzed to identify pathogens in bees. Gopika targets bacteria such as trypanosomatids (a type of parasitic organism that infects agriculture, humans, and animals) and opportunistic (microorganisms that live in the body without being dangerous under normal conditions and cause disease when the right conditions are right) that have not been studied. Gopika’s research offers new insights into the study of pathogens, their evolutionary history, and their potential impact on bee health.
In addition, the innovative application of metabarcoding applied to honey eDNA analysis (an automated system for identifying multiple similar organisms by analyzing the genes of different organisms from a single sample) offers solutions to the problems of honey authenticity and quality control for beekeeping and ecology.
Research has recently isolated some opportunistic species in bees. They are now available to the scientific community in the gene bank of the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) in Australia as Australian variants. It is an important biological knowledge resource under the US National Library of Medicine. This Gen Bank is a major database of nucleotide sequences from a wide variety of organisms that supports research in biotechnology, molecular biology and biomedical sciences.
Gopika’s research and its innovations mean the healing of the human side through the health care of micro-organisms. It is also a great environmental activity. Gopika is the daughter of Kotamtharayil Bhasi-Bindu couple in Njamanengad near Guruvayur. She is also the granddaughter of late Kotamtharaiyil Gopalan master, a former science teacher of Thozhiyur St. George Higher Secondary School and Kamala Rt. teacher of New LP School Nhamamanengad.