On Mar. 27, 2013, researchers at the University of British Columbia and Canada’s Michael Smith Genome Sciences Centre, and the University of Alberta announced they had decoded the genome of the mountain pine beetle – the insect that has devastated B.C.’s lodgepole pine forests

This was a first for the mountain pine beetle and only the second beetle genome ever sequenced. The first was the red flour beetle, a pest of stored grains. The genome was described in a study published in the journal Genome Biology.

“We know a lot about what the beetles do,” says Christopher Keeling, a research associate in Prof. Joerg Bohlmann’s lab at the Michael Smith Laboratories. “But without the genome, we don’t know exactly how they do it.”

The genome revealed large variation among individuals of the species – about four times greater than the variation among humans. Researchers isolated genes that help detoxify defence compounds found under the bark of the tree – where the beetles live. They also found genes that degrade plant cell walls, which allow the beetles to get nutrients from the tree.

Keeling and  colleagues also uncovered a bacterial gene that has jumped into the mountain pine beetle genome. This gene codes for an enzyme that digests sugars. This study involved researchers from the University of Northern British Columbia .