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Gene expression underlying differential adult hind leg morphogenesis in honeybee castes [queen]

ABSTRACT: Along with differences in physiological and behavioral characteristics, workers and queens of Apis mellifera also differ in appendage morphology. Some appendage specializations in the hind legs of honeybee workers, which are highly specialized pollinators, deserve special attention. The hind tibia of the worker has an expanded bristle-free region used for carrying pollen and propolis, the corbicula. In queens, this structure is absent. Although these morphological differences have been well characterized, the genetic inputs triggering the development of this alternative morphology have remained unknown. Through microarray analysis, we detected 1,952 genes that are differentially expressed during worker versus queen hind leg development. The gene expression signatures of the two castes have similar patterns of genes controlling development. At the beginning of the last larval instar, Ultrabithorax (Ubx) activators are more strongly expressed than in prepupae and early pupae; at this time Ubx expression is approximately 25 times higher. Within the gene expression signature, we identified a cluster formed by genes in which Ubx, Twist and Zeste binding sites are over-represented. This cluster includes genes for which Drosophila orthologs are known to be bound by Ubx, as in the case of lola. We also tested the extent of Ubx mRNA processing during wing and leg development.

ORGANISM(S): Apis mellifera

PROVIDER: GSE109547 | GEO | 2019/01/03

REPOSITORIES: GEO

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Project description:Amongst the various different insect groups, there is remarkable diversity in the number and size of wings. However the development of the basic body plan in insects is similar to a large extent. The genes of the hox complex regulate various pathways to bring about the development or modification of different organs. Ubx, a gene of the bithorax hox complex is expressed in the third thoracic segment of insects and is known to specify the fate of wing appendage in that segment.To understand the role of Ubx and how its regulatory mechanism has evolved through the course of evolution we have compared its genome wide targets in different insect orders. The identification of regulatory pathways and the key players Ubx regulates is crucial to understand how it has controlled wing development across insect orders. Our lab has previously identified direct targets of Ubx in Drosophila using ChIP-chip (Agrawal et al, 2011). To further our knowledge on the role of regulation in development and modification of hind wing appendage we have studied the targets in the hind wings of other insects (silk moth; Lepidoptera and honeybee; Hymenoptera) and performed a comparative analysis. We have employed ChIP followed by illumina sequencing to identify the targets of Ubx in developing hind and fore wing buds of Bombyx larvae. This is a first next generation sequencing study in Lepidoptera in an attempt to understand wing development. Chromatin Immunoprecipitation (ChIP) was used to identify genome wide targets bound by Ubx in Bombyx larval wing buds. The experiment to enrich Ubx bound regions was carried out using a Bombyx N terminal-Ubx specific poylclonal antibody raised in Rabbit and purified against a Protein A column to obtain IgG fraction. An Immunoprecipitation (IP) with Normal Rabbit IgG was used as a negative control to eliminate the regions that pertained to non specific binding to an Immunogloubulin. The normalization of both ChIP and IgG was done against sequenced input chromatin. Two replicates of single end 36 bp reads were sequenced using Ilumina for all the three conditions and for both fore and hind wing tissue samples.The peaks common to both the replicates were considered after applying a FDR cutoff.The fore wing target set was used for comparison with the hind wing targets.

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Gene expression underlying differential adult hind leg morphogenesis in honeybee castes [queen]

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