Department of Biological Sciences, Graduate School of Science, The University of Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan.
PLoS One. 2007 Apr 18;2(4):e371. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0000371.
Honeybees organize a sophisticated society, and the workers transmit information about the location of food sources using a symbolic dance, known as 'dance communication'. Recent studies indicate that workers integrate sensory information during foraging flight for dance communication. The neural mechanisms that account for this remarkable ability are, however, unknown. In the present study, we established a novel method to visualize neural activity in the honeybee brain using a novel immediate early gene, kakusei, as a marker of neural activity. The kakusei transcript was localized in the nuclei of brain neurons and did not encode an open reading frame, suggesting that it functions as a non-coding nuclear RNA. Using this method, we show that neural activity of a mushroom body neuron subtype, the small-type Kenyon cells, is prominently increased in the brains of dancer and forager honeybees. In contrast, the neural activity of the two mushroom body neuron subtypes, the small-and large-type Kenyon cells, is increased in the brains of re-orienting workers, which memorize their hive location during re-orienting flights. These findings demonstrate that the small-type Kenyon cell-preferential activity is associated with foraging behavior, suggesting its involvement in information integration during foraging flight, which is an essential basis for dance communication.
蜜蜂组织了一个复杂的社会，工蜂通过一种被称为“舞蹈交流”的象征性舞蹈来传递关于食物来源位置的信息。最近的研究表明，工蜂在觅食飞行中整合感官信息进行舞蹈交流。然而，负责这种非凡能力的神经机制尚不清楚。在本研究中，我们建立了一种使用新型即时早期基因 kakusei 作为神经活动标志物来可视化蜜蜂大脑中神经活动的新方法。kakusei 转录本定位于脑神经元的核内，并且不编码开放阅读框，表明它作为非编码核 RNA 发挥作用。使用这种方法，我们表明，在舞蹈蜂和觅食蜂的大脑中，蘑菇体神经元亚型——小体型肯尼恩细胞的神经活动明显增加。相比之下，在重新定向的工蜂大脑中，两种蘑菇体神经元亚型——小体型和大体型肯尼恩细胞的神经活动增加，而重新定向的工蜂在重新定向飞行中会记住自己蜂巢的位置。这些发现表明，小体型肯尼恩细胞优先活动与觅食行为有关，这表明它参与了觅食飞行中的信息整合，这是舞蹈交流的重要基础。
