Bee Protection Center, Department of Biology, Faculty of Science, Chiang Mai University, Chiang Mai, Thailand.
J Insect Physiol. 2012 Aug;58(8):1090-5. doi: 10.1016/j.jinsphys.2012.04.016. Epub 2012 May 16.
Nosema ceranae is a microsporidium parasite infecting adult honey bees (Apis mellifera) and is known to affects at both the individual and colony level. In this study, the expression levels were measured for four antimicrobial peptide encoding genes that are associated with bee humoral immunity (defensin, abaecin, apidaecin, and hymenoptaecin), eater gene which is a transmembrane protein involved cellular immunity and gene encoding female-specific protein (vitellogenin) in honey bees when inoculated by N. ceranae. The results showed that four of these genes, defensin, abaecin, apidaecin and hymenoptaecin were significantly down-regulated 3 and 6days after inoculations. Additionally, antimicrobial peptide expressions did not significantly differ between control and inoculated bees after 12days post inoculation. Moreover, our results revealed that the mRNA levels of eater and vitellogenin did not differ significantly following N. ceranae inoculation. Therefore, in this study we reaffirmed that N. ceranae infection induces host immunosuppression.
微孢子虫寄生虫“蜂微孢子虫”（Nosema ceranae）感染成年蜜蜂（Apis mellifera），已知对个体和群体水平都有影响。在这项研究中，我们测量了与蜜蜂体液免疫相关的四种抗菌肽编码基因（防御素、abaecin、apidaecin 和 hymenoptaecin）、一种参与细胞免疫的跨膜蛋白 eater 基因和编码雌性特异性蛋白（卵黄原蛋白）的基因在被“蜂微孢子虫”感染后的表达水平。结果表明，在感染后 3 天和 6 天，这 4 个基因（防御素、abaecin、apidaecin 和 hymenoptaecin）的表达显著下调。此外，在感染后 12 天，对照和接种蜜蜂之间的抗菌肽表达没有显著差异。此外，我们的结果表明，在“蜂微孢子虫”接种后，eater 和卵黄原蛋白的 mRNA 水平没有显著差异。因此，在这项研究中，我们再次证实了“蜂微孢子虫”感染会诱导宿主免疫抑制。
