Old Threads Make New Tapestry—Rewiring of Signalling Pathways Underlies Caste Phenotypic Plasticity in the Honey Bee, Apis mellifera L.

Differential expression of miRNAs related to caste differentiation in the honey bee, Apis mellifera

“…Several aspects including ecdysone, juvenile hormone (JH), TOR pathway, epigenetic modification, royalactin, and insulin have been reported to function in caste determination of worker and queen bee (Capella and Hartfelder 1998;Hartfelder et al 2015;Kamakura 2011;Kucharski et al 2008;Leimar et al 2012;Patel et al 2007;Pinto et al 2002;Wheeler et al 2006). We previously showed that miRNAs in jellies could influence the caste determination of worker and queen bee larvae (Guo et al 2013).…”

“…They have underdeveloped reproductive organs but have keen sensory apparatus and a strong ability to act as guards for the colony. The queen, on the other hand, is larger in size with a longer life span and has an extremely high reproductive capacity (Evans and Wheeler 1999;Hartfelder et al 2015;Kamakura 2011;Leimar et al 2012;Page and Peng 2001;Shuel and Dixon 1960). Although the proportion of queen bees in a colony is very small, the generation of queens is not random.…”

Why do social insect queens live so long? Approaches to unravel the sociality-aging puzzle

“…First studies revealed that the same genetic pathways are involved in senescence in social insects and in solitary model organisms [27] (see Elsner et al, in this issue). However, some components of these pathways (such as vitellogenin) might have acquired additional functions [28][29][30][31][32].…”

Physiological and Molecular Mechanisms of Nutrition in Honey Bees

“…Recently, several insights into queen-worker caste differentiation have been gained by taking advantage of new molecular biology technologies and the honey bee genome sequencing (Elsik et al, 2014;Honey bee Genome Sequencing Consortium, 2006). Studies have demonstrated that hormone cascades and nutrient-sensing pathways cooperate to influence queen-worker caste development (Hartfelder et al, 2015).…”

“…In honey bees, queen-and worker-destined larvae differ in JH titres during the third to fifth instars . Queen larvae always have much higher JH titres than worker larvae (Hartfelder et al, 2015;Rembold, 1987). Experimental application of the JH analogue, methoprene, can fully determine queen phenotypes even when a worker diet is provided (Asencot and Lensky, 1976;Dietz et al, 1979), which suggests that JH plays a key role in queen-worker determination.…”