Mol Biol Evol. 2010 Mar;27(3):497-500. doi: 10.1093/molbev/msp225. Epub 2010 Jan 28.
Eusocial insects exhibit unparalleled levels of cooperation and dominate terrestrial ecosystems. The success of eusocial insects stems from the presence of specialized castes that undertake distinct tasks. We investigated whether the evolutionary transition to societies with discrete castes was associated with changes in protein evolution. We predicted that proteins with caste-biased gene expression would evolve rapidly due to reduced antagonistic pleiotropy. We found that queen-biased proteins of the honeybee Apis mellifera did indeed evolve rapidly, as predicted. However, worker-biased proteins exhibited slower evolutionary rates than queen-biased or nonbiased proteins. We suggest that distinct selective pressures operating on caste-biased genes, rather than a general reduction in pleiotropy, explain the observed differences in evolutionary rates. Our study highlights, for the first time, the interaction between highly social behavior and dynamics of protein evolution.
社会性昆虫表现出无与伦比的合作水平，主导着陆地生态系统。社会性昆虫的成功源于存在专门的分工，承担不同的任务。我们研究了向具有不同等级的社会的进化转变是否与蛋白质进化的变化有关。我们预测，由于拮抗多效性的减少，具有等级偏向性表达的基因的蛋白质会快速进化。我们发现，正如预测的那样，蜜蜂（Apis mellifera）中具有蜂王偏倚性的蛋白质确实进化得很快。然而，与蜂王偏倚性或非偏倚性蛋白质相比，工蜂偏倚性蛋白质的进化速度较慢。我们认为，对具有等级偏向性的基因的不同选择压力，而不是多效性的普遍减少，解释了观察到的进化速度差异。我们的研究首次强调了高度社会行为与蛋白质进化动态之间的相互作用。
