Transcriptome differences in the hypopharyngeal gland between Western Honeybees (Apis mellifera) and Eastern Honeybees (Apis cerana)

BMC Genomics

Zhi-Jiang Zeng¹  Wei-Yu Yan¹  Xiao-Bo Wu¹  Qiu-Hong Qin¹  Liu-Qing Tian¹  Zi-Long Wang¹  Hao Liu¹ 

[1] Honeybee Research Institute, Jiangxi Agricultural University, Nanchang, Jiangxi 330045, China

关键词: Differentially expressed gene;    Digital gene expression;    Hypopharyngeal gland;    Apis cerana;    Apis mellifera;   

Others  :  1141053
DOI  :  10.1186/1471-2164-15-744

 received in 2014-04-14, accepted in 2014-08-26,  发布年份 2014

【 摘 要 】

Background

Apis mellifera and Apis cerana are two sibling species of Apidae. Apis cerana is adept at collecting sporadic nectar in mountain and forest region and exhibits stiffer hardiness and acarid resistance as a result of natural selection, whereas Apis mellifera has the advantage of producing royal jelly. To identify differentially expressed genes (DEGs) that affect the development of hypopharyngeal gland (HG) and/or the secretion of royal jelly between these two honeybee species, we performed a digital gene expression (DGE) analysis of the HGs of these two species at three developmental stages (newly emerged worker, nurse and forager).

Results

Twelve DGE-tag libraries were constructed and sequenced using the total RNA extracted from the HGs of newly emerged workers, nurses, and foragers of Apis mellifera and Apis cerana. Finally, a total of 1482 genes in Apis mellifera and 1313 in Apis cerana were found to exhibit an expression difference among the three developmental stages. A total of 1417 DEGs were identified between these two species. Of these, 623, 1072, and 462 genes showed an expression difference at the newly emerged worker, nurse, and forager stages, respectively. The nurse stage exhibited the highest number of DEGs between these two species and most of these were found to be up-regulated in Apis mellifera. These results suggest that the higher yield of royal jelly in Apis mellifera may be due to the higher expression level of these DEGs.

Conclusions

In this study, we investigated the DEGs between the HGs of two sibling honeybee species (Apis mellifera and Apis cerana). Our results indicated that the gene expression difference was associated with the difference in the royal jelly yield between these two species. These results provide an important clue for clarifying the mechanisms underlying hypopharyngeal gland development and the production of royal jelly.

【 授权许可】

   
2014 Liu et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd.

【 图 表 】

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