Linking Genes and Brain Development of Honeybee Workers: A Whole-Transcriptome Approach.

ABSTRACT: Honeybees live in complex societies whose capabilities far exceed those of the sum of their single members. This social synergism is achieved mainly by the worker bees, which form a female caste. The worker bees display diverse collaborative behaviors and engage in different behavioral tasks, which are controlled by the central nervous system (CNS). The development of the worker brain is determined by the female sex and the worker caste determination signal. Here, we report on genes that are controlled by sex or by caste during differentiation of the worker's pupal brain. We sequenced and compared transcriptomes from the pupal brains of honeybee workers, queens and drones. We detected 333 genes that are differently expressed and 519 genes that are differentially spliced between the sexes,

SUBMITTER: Vleurinck C 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4973980 | biostudies-literature | 2016

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature