Proteomic analyses of male contributions to honey bee sperm storage and mating

Abstract

Honey bee ( Apis mellifera L.) queens mate early in life and store sperm for years. Male bees likely contribute significantly to sperm survival. Proteins were extracted from seminal vesicles and semen of mature drones, separated by electrophoresis, and analysed by peptide mass fingerprinting. Computer searches against three databases, general species, honey bees and fruit flies, were performed. Spectra were used to query the recently generated honey bee genome protein list as well as general species and fruit fly databases. Of the 69 unique honey bee proteins found, 66 are also in Drosophila melanogaster . Two proteins only matched honey bee genes and one is a widespread protein lost from the fly genome. There is over-representation of genes implicated in the glycolysis pathway. Metabolismassociated proteins were found primarily in the seminal vesicle. Male accessory gland proteins as identified in Drosophila rarely had orthologs among proteins found in the honey bee. A complete listing of gel spots chosen including honey bee genome matches and Mascot searches of MALDI-TOF results with statistics is in the Supplementary table. MALDI-TOF spectra and more complete Mascot peptide mass fingerprinting data are available on request. Supplementary figs 1 -3 show the stained protein gels.

Identity and transfer of male reproductive gland proteins of the dengue vector mosquito, Aedes aegypti: Potential tools for control of female feeding and reproduction

“…Other protein classes that we identified in the putative Ae. aegypti mRGPs have previously been found in male mRGPs of other insects including: chaperones, CRISPs (cysteine-rich secreted proteins), defensins, lectins, lipases, oxidoreductases, RNAses (Mueller et al, 2004;Collins et al, 2006;Walker et al, 2006), and small peptides (Table 1).…”

“…aegypti mRGPs 3.5.A Ae. aegypti mRGP protein classes-One striking feature of male mRGPs is the conservation of protein classes across a wide range of organisms (Mueller et al, 2004;Clark and Swanson, 2005;Braswell et al, 2006;Collins et al, 2006;Davies and Chapman, 2006;Poiani, 2006;Dottorini et al, 2007). The 63 putative Ae.…”

“…Seminal fluid protein classes are generally conserved across a wide taxonomic range (Mueller et al, 2004;Braswell et al, 2006;Collins et al, 2006;Davies and Chapman, 2006) but several of the proteins themselves evolve more rapidly, on average, than other proteins (Clark et al, 1995;Civetta and Singh, 1999;Civetta and Clark, 2000;Swanson et al, 2001;Swanson and Vacquier, 2002;Clark and Swanson, 2005;Wagstaff and Begun, 2005;Clark et al, 2006;Andrés et al, 2006;Panhuis and Swanson, 2006;Haerty et al, In press). Therefore, it is necessary to identify mRGPs for each species individually.…”

Total antioxidant capacity of honeybee haemolymph in relation to age and exposure to pesticide, and comparison to antioxidant capacity of seminal plasma

“…This is the first report describing TAC in drone seminal plasma. To date, enzymatic compounds of antioxidative protection consisting of SOD, GSH and catalase have been studied in detail in drone reproductive tissue and semen, and spermathecae of queens (Weirich et al 2002;Collins et al 2004Collins et al , 2006. The substantial activities of all three enzymes in spermathecae of mated queens suggest their involvement in the long-term protection of the spermatozoa from oxidative stress (Weirich et al 2002).…”

“…The most important antioxidant enzymes identified in honeybee body fluids are superoxide dismutase (SOD), catalase (CAT), glutathione Stransferase (GST) and peroxidase (Weirich et al 2002;Collins et al 2004Collins et al , 2006. To date, 39 genes coding ten groups of antioxidant proteins have been identified in the honeybee genome (Corona and Robinson 2006).…”