Liang Chengbo, Liu Daoxin, Song Pengfei, Zhou Yuantao, Yu Hongyan, Sun Guo, Ma Xiaoxuan, Yan Jingyan
State Key Laboratory of Plateau Ecology and Agriculture, Qinghai University, Xining 810016, China.
College of Agriculture and Animal Husbandry, Qinghai University, Xining 810016, China.
Insects. 2022 Dec 17;13(12):1173. doi: 10.3390/insects13121173.
Determining the adaptive mechanisms by which bumblebees adapt to high altitudes can help us to better understand their distribution, providing a basis for the future protection and utilization of bumblebee resources. For this study, the adaptive mechanisms of two dominant bumblebee species in the northeastern Qinghai-Tibet Plateau- and -were studied through transcriptomics methods. For each species, enrichment analysis of the differentially expressed genes and gene set enrichment analysis were carried out between samples collected at different altitudes (4000 m, 4500 m, and 5000 m). The results indicate that these bumblebees tend to up-regulate energy metabolism-related genes when facing extremely high-altitude environments. Of the enriched pathways up-regulated in higher altitudes, the pentose and glucuronate interconversions pathway presented the most severe up-regulation in multiple comparisons of different altitudes for , as well as the AMPK signaling pathway, which was found to be up-regulated in both species. Notably, limited by the extreme hypoxic conditions in this study, oxidative phosphorylation was found to be down-regulated with increasing altitude, which is uncommon in studies on bumblebee adaptation to high altitudes.
确定大黄蜂适应高海拔的适应性机制有助于我们更好地了解它们的分布情况，为未来大黄蜂资源的保护和利用提供依据。在本研究中，通过转录组学方法研究了青藏高原东北部两种优势大黄蜂物种的适应性机制。对于每个物种，在不同海拔（4000米、4500米和5000米）采集的样本之间进行了差异表达基因的富集分析和基因集富集分析。结果表明，这些大黄蜂在面对极高海拔环境时倾向于上调能量代谢相关基因。在高海拔上调的富集通路中，戊糖和葡萄糖醛酸相互转化通路在不同海拔的多次比较中上调最为显著，以及AMPK信号通路，在两个物种中均被发现上调。值得注意的是，受本研究极端缺氧条件的限制，发现氧化磷酸化随海拔升高而下调，这在大黄蜂适应高海拔的研究中并不常见。
