Iovinella Immacolata, Cappa Federico, Cini Alessandro, Petrocelli Iacopo, Cervo Rita, Turillazzi Stefano, Dani Francesca R
Department of Biology, Università degli Studi di Firenze, Florence, Italy.
Centre for Biodiversity and Environment Research, University College London, London, United Kingdom.
Front Physiol. 2018 Jun 20;9:748. doi: 10.3389/fphys.2018.00748. eCollection 2018.
Reproductive and task partitioning in large colonies of social insects suggest that colony members belonging to different castes or performing different tasks during their life (polyethism) may produce specific semiochemicals and be differently sensitive to the variety of pheromones involved in intraspecific chemical communication. The main peripheral olfactory organs are the antennal chemosensilla, where the early olfactory processes take place. At this stage, members of two different families of soluble chemosensory proteins [odorant-binding proteins (OBPs) and chemosensory proteins (CSPs)] show a remarkable affinity for different odorants and act as carriers while a further family, the Niemann-Pick type C2 proteins (NPC2) may have a similar function, although this has not been fully demonstrated. Sensillar lymph also contains Odorant degrading enzymes (ODEs) which are involved in inactivation through degradation of the chemical signals, once the message is conveyed. Despite their importance in chemical communication, little is known about how proteins involved in peripheral olfaction and, more generally antennal proteins, differ in honeybees of different caste, task and age. Here, we investigate for the first time, using a shotgun proteomic approach, the antennal profile of honeybees of different castes (queens and workers) and workers performing different tasks (nurses, guards, and foragers) by controlling for the potential confounding effect of age. Regarding olfactory proteins, major differences were observed between queens and workers, some of which were found to be more abundant in queens (OBP3, OBP18, and NPC2-1) and others to be more abundant in workers (OBP15, OBP21, CSP1, and CSP3); while between workers performing different tasks, OBP14 was more abundant in nurses with respect to guards and foragers. Apart from proteins involved in olfaction, we have found that the antennal proteomes are mainly characterized by castes and tasks, while age has no effect on antennal protein profile. Among the main differences, the strong decrease in vitellogenins found in guards and foragers is not associated with age.
社会性昆虫大群体中的生殖与任务分工表明，属于不同品级或在其生命过程中执行不同任务（多型现象）的群体成员可能会产生特定的化学信号物质，并且对种内化学通讯中涉及的各种信息素具有不同的敏感性。主要的外周嗅觉器官是触角化学感受器，早期嗅觉过程在此发生。在此阶段，两类不同的可溶性化学感受蛋白家族[气味结合蛋白（OBP）和化学感受蛋白（CSP）]的成员对不同气味具有显著亲和力，并充当载体，而另一类蛋白，即尼曼-皮克C2型蛋白（NPC2）可能具有类似功能，尽管这一点尚未得到充分证实。感器淋巴中还含有气味降解酶（ODE），一旦化学信号传递完成，这些酶就会通过降解化学信号参与使其失活的过程。尽管它们在化学通讯中很重要，但对于参与外周嗅觉的蛋白质以及更一般的触角蛋白质在不同品级、任务和年龄的蜜蜂中如何不同，我们了解甚少。在这里，我们首次采用鸟枪法蛋白质组学方法，通过控制年龄的潜在混杂效应，研究了不同品级（蜂王和工蜂）以及执行不同任务（保育蜂、守卫蜂和采蜜蜂）的工蜂的触角蛋白质谱。关于嗅觉蛋白，在蜂王和工蜂之间观察到了主要差异，其中一些在蜂王中更为丰富（OBP3、OBP18和NPC2-1），而另一些在工蜂中更为丰富（OBP15、OBP21、CSP1和CSP3）；在执行不同任务的工蜂之间，OBP14在保育蜂中相对于守卫蜂和采蜜蜂更为丰富。除了参与嗅觉的蛋白质外，我们发现触角蛋白质组主要由品级和任务决定，而年龄对触角蛋白质谱没有影响。在主要差异中，守卫蜂和采蜜蜂中卵黄原蛋白的大幅减少与年龄无关。
