August 3, 2016
Researchers from New Zealand's
University of Otago have discovered the molecular mechanism by which queen
honeybees carefully control worker bees' fertility.
It has long been known that worker bees have a very limited
ability to reproduce in a hive with a queen and brood present, but in their
absence, a third of them will activate their ovaries and lay eggs that hatch
into fertile male drones.
It is queen pheromone that
represses worker bee fertility, but how it achieves this has remained unclear.
Now, Otago genetics researchers
have identified that an ancient cell-signalling pathway called Notch, which
plays a major role in regulating embryonic development in all animals, has been
co-opted to also constrain reproduction in worker bees.
In research newly published in
the prestigious journal Nature Communications, Professor Peter Dearden and
colleagues Drs Elizabeth Duncan and Otto Hyink demonstrated that chemically
inhibiting Notch signalling can overcome the effect of queen mandibular pheromone (QMP)
and promote ovary activity
in adult worker bees.
Professor Dearden says they were
surprised to find that Notch signalling acts on the earliest stages of egg
development in the ovary, perhaps even on the stem cells that make the ovary,
and that in the absence of QMP the Notch receptor in a key region of worker bee
ovaries becomes degraded.
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