Scientists, using $7.8 million in new research funding have begun a research project, attempting to end the war between the mountain pine beetle and lodgepole pine trees, in an attempt to find the tiny pest’s genetic blueprint, hoping to find key information on how molecular levels triggers it to attack the trees, which can destroy even as vast a landscape, as Canada’s northern pine forests.
 
The bark beetle is no larger than a grain of rice, an carries an even tinier fungus that stains the infected wood, including the host i.e. lodgepole pines blue.  The beetle burrows into a tree, carrying the blue-staining fungus with it, with the tree reacting by producing toxic pitch.  This makes the beetle release pheromones produced from the tree’s own pitch, thus completing the symbiotic cycle and drawing draws other beetles to the new host tree, escalating the stress on the tree, including its ability to produce toxic sap, overwhelming the trees defences completely.
 
Once inside, the beetle lays its eggs, with the larvae producing an anti-freeze that enables them to withstand -40 degree winter temperatures, as the fungus weakens the layer beneath the bark, allowing the larvae to chew their way through it, eventually killing the tree.
 
Looking at the outbreak more like a disease infecting an organism, with the endless pine forests sweeping across Canada, from British Columbia Interior to Newfoundland being the organism, the scientists wish to discover the molecular interactions between both players’ i.e. the beetle and the pine trees, in what is one of nature’s most dramatic battles, a war that can potentially kill a continent-wide eco-system.
 
Once they have discovered it, they can add geographic and economic data to their findings to assist in forecasting and controlling future outbreaks, contributing to forest economics by showing which regions’ timber supplies are being threatened, or even showing where to build future bio-energy plants by using beetle-killed timber for fuel.
 
The $7.8 million project, largely funded by Genome Canada, Genome B.C., and Genome Alberta, will be conducted in universities and institutions in Alberta and British Columbia.
 
The researchers hope to discover the genomic triggers for that produce anti-freeze in beetles, hoping to develop environmentally-safe pesticides to affect receptors in the beetle, the fungus or the trees, so that the disease process can be interrupted.