Rodríguez-León Daniel Sebastián, Schmitt Thomas, Pinto María Alice, Thamm Markus, Scheiner Ricarda
University of Würzburg, Biocenter, Department of Animal Ecology and Tropical Biology, Würzburg, Germany.
University of Würzburg, Biocenter, Department of Behavioral Physiology and Sociobiology, Würzburg, Germany.
Mol Ecol. 2025 Apr;34(8):e17716. doi: 10.1111/mec.17716. Epub 2025 Mar 6.
Most terrestrial insects have a layer of cuticular hydrocarbons (CHCs) protecting them from desiccation and mediating chemical communication. The composition of these hydrocarbons is highly plastic and changes during their lifetime and with environmental conditions. How these changes in CHC composition are achieved is largely unknown. CHC profiles of Apis mellifera honey bees vary among castes, task groups and subspecies adapted to different climates. This makes A. mellifera an excellent model for studying the molecular mechanism underlying CHC biosynthesis. We correlated the expression of specific elongase- and desaturase-encoding genes with the CHC composition in bees performing different social tasks in two highly divergent A. mellifera subspecies. Elongases are enzymes that lengthen the hydrocarbon chain, while desaturases introduce double bonds in it. We evaluated the hypothesis that the expression of the genes encoding these enzymes determines CHC profiles of the worker bees. Our results revealed that the specificity of desaturases and elongases shapes the CHC profiles of worker bees performing different social tasks. Expression of the desaturase-encoding gene LOC100576797 and the elongase-encoding gene LOC550828 seemed to be strongly associated with the abundance of compounds that were characteristic of the CHC profile of nurse bees. In contrast, the compounds that characterised the CHC profiles of the forager bees seemed to be associated with the desaturase-encoding gene LOC551527 and the elongase-encoding gene LOC409638. Our data shed light on the genetic basis for task-specific CHC composition differences in social hymenopterans and paved the ground for unravelling the genetic underpinning of CHC biosynthesis.
大多数陆生昆虫都有一层表皮碳氢化合物（CHCs），可保护它们免受干燥影响并介导化学通讯。这些碳氢化合物的组成具有高度可塑性，在其生命周期中以及随着环境条件而变化。这些CHC组成的变化是如何实现的，目前很大程度上尚不清楚。意大利蜜蜂（Apis mellifera）的CHC谱在不同蜂种、任务群体以及适应不同气候的亚种之间存在差异。这使得意大利蜜蜂成为研究CHC生物合成潜在分子机制的极佳模型。我们将特定的编码延长酶和去饱和酶的基因表达与两种高度不同的意大利蜜蜂亚种中执行不同社会任务的蜜蜂的CHC组成进行了关联。延长酶是延长碳氢化合物链的酶，而去饱和酶则在其中引入双键。我们评估了编码这些酶的基因表达决定工蜂CHC谱的假设。我们的结果表明，去饱和酶和延长酶的特异性塑造了执行不同社会任务的工蜂的CHC谱。编码去饱和酶的基因LOC100576797和编码延长酶的基因LOC550828的表达似乎与哺育蜂CHC谱特征性化合物的丰度密切相关。相比之下，表征采集蜂CHC谱的化合物似乎与编码去饱和酶的基因LOC551527和编码延长酶的基因LOC409638有关。我们的数据揭示了社会性膜翅目昆虫中任务特异性CHC组成差异的遗传基础，并为揭示CHC生物合成的遗传基础奠定了基础。
