Camiletti Alison L, Percival-Smith Anthony, Croft Justin R, Thompson Graham J
Biology Department, Western University, 1151 Richmond Street, London, Ontario, N6A 5B7 Canada.
Department of Ecology and Evolution, Biophore, UNIL-Sorge, University of Lausanne, 1015 Lausanne, Switzerland.
Sci Rep. 2016 Oct 27;6:36041. doi: 10.1038/srep36041.
For honey bee and other social insect colonies the 'queen substance' regulates colony reproduction rendering workers functionally sterile. The evolution of worker reproductive altruism is explained by inclusive fitness theory, but little is known of the genes involved or how they regulate the phenotypic expression of altruism. We previously showed that application of honeybee queen pheromone to virgin fruit flies suppresses fecundity. Here we exploit this finding to identify genes associated with the perception of an ovary-inhibiting social pheromone. Mutational and RNAi approaches in Drosophila reveal that the olfactory co-factor Orco together with receptors Or49b, Or56a and Or98a are potentially involved in the perception of queen pheromone and the suppression of fecundity. One of these, Or98a, is known to mediate female fly mating behaviour, and its predicted ligand is structurally similar to a methyl component of the queen pheromone. Our novel approach to finding genes associated with pheromone-induced sterility implies conserved reproductive regulation between social and pre-social orders, and further helps to identify candidate orthologues from the pheromone-responsive pathway that may regulate honeybee worker sterility.
对于蜜蜂和其他社会性昆虫群体而言，“蜂王物质”调节群体繁殖，使工蜂在功能上不育。工蜂生殖利他行为的进化可以用广义适合度理论来解释，但对于其中涉及的基因以及它们如何调节利他行为的表型表达却知之甚少。我们之前表明，将蜜蜂蜂王信息素应用于未交配的果蝇会抑制其繁殖力。在此，我们利用这一发现来鉴定与卵巢抑制性社会信息素感知相关的基因。果蝇中的突变和RNA干扰方法表明，嗅觉辅助因子Orco与受体Or49b、Or56a和Or98a可能参与蜂王信息素的感知以及繁殖力的抑制。其中之一Or98a已知介导雌蝇的交配行为，其预测的配体在结构上与蜂王信息素的一种甲基成分相似。我们寻找与信息素诱导不育相关基因的新方法意味着社会昆虫和前社会昆虫类群之间存在保守的生殖调节，并且进一步有助于从信息素反应途径中鉴定出可能调节蜜蜂工蜂不育的候选直系同源基因。
