pr201222s_si_003.xls (54.5 kB)
Worker Honeybee Sterility: A Proteomic Analysis of Suppressed Ovary Activation
dataset
posted on 2012-05-04, 00:00 authored by Dries Cardoen, Ulrich R. Ernst, Bart Boerjan, Annelies Bogaerts, Ellen Formesyn, Dirk C. de Graaf, Tom Wenseleers, Liliane Schoofs, Peter VerleyenEusocial behavior is extensively studied in the honeybee, Apis mellifera, as it displays an extreme form of altruism.
Honeybee workers are generally obligatory sterile in a bee colony
headed by a queen, but the inhibition of ovary activation is lifted
upon the absence of queen and larvae. Worker bees are then able to
develop mature, viable eggs. The detailed repressive physiological
mechanisms that are responsible for this remarkable phenomenon are
as of yet largely unknown. Physiological studies today mainly focus
on the transcriptome, while the proteome stays rather unexplored.
Here, we present a quantitative 2-dimensional differential gel electrophoresis
comparison between activated and inactivated worker ovaries and brains
of reproductive and sterile worker bees, including a spot map of ovaries,
containing 197 identified spots. Our findings suggest that suppression
of ovary activation might involve a constant interplay between primordial
oogenesis and subsequent degradation, which is probably mediated through
steroid and neuropeptide hormone signaling. Additionally, the observation
of higher viral protein loads in both the brains and ovaries of sterile
workers is particularly noteworthy. This data set will be of great
value for future research unraveling the physiological mechanisms
underlying the altruistic sterility in honeybee workers.