| Title: | Comparative transcriptomics of social insect queen pheromones |
| Author(s): | Holman L; Helantera H; Trontti K; Mikheyev AS; |
| Address: | "School of BioSciences, University of Melbourne, VIC, 3010, Melbourne, Australia. luke.holman@unimelb.edu.au. Ecology and Genetics Research Unit, University of Oulu, FI-90014, Oulu, Finland. Department of Biosciences, University of Helsinki, P.O. Box 65, Helsinki, 00014, Finland. Research School of Biology, Australian National University, Canberra, ACT, 0200, Australia. alexander.mikheyev@anu.edu.au. Ecology and evolution unit, Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology, Onna-son, Kunigami-gun, Okinawa, 904-0412, Japan. alexander.mikheyev@anu.edu.au" |
| DOI: | 10.1038/s41467-019-09567-2 |
| ISSN/ISBN: | 2041-1723 (Electronic) 2041-1723 (Linking) |
| Abstract: | "Queen pheromones are chemical signals that mediate reproductive division of labor in eusocial animals. Remarkably, queen pheromones are composed of identical or chemically similar compounds in some ants, wasps and bees, even though these taxa diverged >150MYA and evolved queens and workers independently. Here, we measure the transcriptomic consequences of experimental exposure to queen pheromones in workers from two ant and two bee species (genera: Lasius, Apis, Bombus), and test whether they are similar across species. Queen pheromone exposure affected transcription and splicing at many loci. Many genes responded consistently in multiple species, and the set of pheromone-sensitive genes was enriched for functions relating to lipid biosynthesis and transport, olfaction, production of cuticle, oogenesis, and histone (de)acetylation. Pheromone-sensitive genes tend to be evolutionarily ancient, positively selected, peripheral in the gene coexpression network, hypomethylated, and caste-specific in their expression. Our results reveal how queen pheromones achieve their effects, and suggest that ants and bees use similar genetic modules to achieve reproductive division of labor" |
| Keywords: | "Animals Ants/*physiology Bees/*physiology Behavior, Animal/*physiology Biological Evolution Female Gene Expression Profiling Gene Expression Regulation/*physiology Pheromones/*physiology Reproduction/physiology Sequence Analysis, RNA Social Behavior Trans;" |
| Notes: | "MedlineHolman, Luke Helantera, Heikki Trontti, Kalevi Mikheyev, Alexander S eng Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't England 2019/04/10 Nat Commun. 2019 Apr 8; 10(1):1593. doi: 10.1038/s41467-019-09567-2" |
