Nutritionally driven differential gene expression leads to heterochronic brain development in honeybee castes.

ABSTRACT: The differential feeding regimes experienced by the queen and worker larvae of the honeybee Apis mellifera shape a complex endocrine response cascade that ultimately gives rise to differences in brain morphologies. Brain development analyzed at the morphological level from the third (L3) through fifth (L5) larval instars revealed an asynchrony between queens and workers. In the feeding phase of the last larval instar (L5F), two well-formed structures, pedunculi and calyces, are identifiable in the mushroom bodies of queens, both of which are not present in workers until a later phase (spinning phase, L5S). Genome-wide expression analyses and normalized transcript expression experiments monitoring specific genes revealed that this differential brain development starts earlier, during L3. An

SUBMITTER: Moda LM 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3667793 | biostudies-literature | 2013

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature