Ben-Shahar Y, Robichon A, Sokolowski M B, Robinson G E
Department of Entomology, Neuroscience Program, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 320 Morrill Hall, 505 South Goodwin Avenue, Urbana, IL 61801, USA.
Science. 2002 Apr 26;296(5568):741-4. doi: 10.1126/science.1069911.
Genes can affect natural behavioral variation in different ways. Allelic variation causes alternative behavioral phenotypes, whereas changes in gene expression can influence the initiation of behavior at different ages. We show that the age-related transition by honey bees from hive work to foraging is associated with an increase in the expression of the foraging (for) gene, which encodes a guanosine 3',5'-monophosphate (cGMP)-dependent protein kinase (PKG). cGMP treatment elevated PKG activity and caused foraging behavior. Previous research showed that allelic differences in PKG expression result in two Drosophila foraging variants. The same gene can thus exert different types of influence on a behavior.
基因可以通过不同方式影响自然行为变异。等位基因变异会导致行为表型的差异，而基因表达的变化则会影响不同年龄阶段行为的起始。我们发现，蜜蜂从蜂巢工作向觅食的与年龄相关的转变，与觅食（for）基因表达的增加有关，该基因编码一种依赖于3',5'-环磷酸鸟苷（cGMP）的蛋白激酶（PKG）。cGMP处理提高了PKG活性并引发了觅食行为。先前的研究表明，PKG表达中的等位基因差异导致了两种果蝇觅食变体。因此，同一个基因可以对一种行为施加不同类型的影响。
