Cyclic nucleotide-gated channels, calmodulin, adenylyl cyclase, and calcium/calmodulin-dependent protein kinase II are required for late, but not early, long-term memory formation in the honeybee.

Memory is a dynamic process that allows encoding, storage, and retrieval of information acquired through individual experience. In the honeybee Apis mellifera, olfactory conditioning of the proboscis extension response (PER) has shown that besides short-term memory (STM) and mid-term memory (MTM), two phases of long-term memory (LTM) are formed upon multiple-trial conditioning: an early phase (e-LTM) which depends on translation from already available mRNA, and a late phase (l-LTM) which requires de novo transcription and translation. Here we combined olfactory PER conditioning and neuropharmacological inhibition and studied the involvement of the NO-cGMP pathway, and of specific molecules, such as cyclic nucleotide-gated channels (CNG), calmodulin (CaM), adenylyl cyclase (AC), and Ca(2+)/calmodulin-dependent protein kinase (CaMKII), in the formation of olfactory LTM in bees. We show that in addition to NO-cGMP and cAMP-PKA, CNG channels, CaM, AC, and CaMKII also participate in the formation of a l-LTM (72-h post-conditioning) that is specific for the learned odor. Importantly, the same molecules are dispensable for olfactory learning and for the formation of both MTM (in the minute and hour range) and e-LTM (24-h post-conditioning), thus suggesting that the signaling pathways leading to l-LTM or e-LTM involve different molecular actors.