IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/gam/jagris/v12y2022i7p952-d853123.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Division of Labor among Worker Bees Is Associated with the Lipidomic Plasticity in Their Brains

Author

Listed:
  • Xiaojing Zhang

    (Institute of Apicultural Research, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Beijing 100093, China
    These authors contributed equally to this work.)

  • Yue Hao

    (Institute of Apicultural Research, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Beijing 100093, China
    These authors contributed equally to this work.)

  • Qingsheng Niu

    (Key Laboratory for Bee Genetics and Breeding, Jilin Provincial Institute of Apicultural Sciences, Jilin 132108, China)

  • Yanping Chen

    (Bee Research Laboratory, U.S. Department of Agriculture-Agricultural Research Service (USDA-ARS), Beltsville, MD 20705, USA)

  • Zhenyu Xia

    (Institute of Apicultural Research, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Beijing 100093, China)

  • Zihan Xie

    (Institute of Apicultural Research, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Beijing 100093, China)

  • Yazhou Zhao

    (Institute of Apicultural Research, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Beijing 100093, China)

  • Lingjie Kong

    (Institute of Apicultural Research, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Beijing 100093, China)

  • Wenjun Peng

    (Institute of Apicultural Research, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Beijing 100093, China)

Abstract

The division of labor is a dominant characteristic of honeybees and is accompanied by behavioral specialization and cognitive enhancement. As the central nervous system to control the labor-specific behaviors of honeybee, the brain is richest in lipid in terms of both diversity and abundance. In this study, an in-depth LC-MS/MS-based lipidomic method was applied to systematically characterize the brain lipid compositions of worker bees with three labor stages: newly emerged bee (NEB), nurse bee (NB), and forager bee (FB). A total number of 337 lipid species that assigned to 20 lipid classes were analyzed. The association of the brain lipidomes with the division of labors was suggested by the results of both the unsupervised and supervised multivariate pattern recognition analysis. More than 68% of the identified lipid species were found to be significantly changed in at least one comparison between NEB, NB, and FB. A total of 81 lipid species were identified as the potential labor-featured molecules with VIP > 1 and p -adj < 0.05. The labor-featured lipids of FA(18:2), FA(18:3), FA(26:0), PC(18:0_18:3), PS(18:1_18:1), SM(d38:1), CoQ10, and CoQ9, as well as their interactions with 12 behavior-related genes, including AmEST-6 , AmFABP , AmE75 , AmDGAT2 , AmLSD1 , AmNPC1 , AmABCA1 , AmNMDAR1 , AmHTT , AmNOS , etc., were revealed by the further IPA analysis. These findings demonstrate for the first time that the brain lipidomes of worker bees are associated with the stable differences in their labors, which help understand the function of brain lipids on the labor-dependent behaviors of honeybees.

Suggested Citation

  • Xiaojing Zhang & Yue Hao & Qingsheng Niu & Yanping Chen & Zhenyu Xia & Zihan Xie & Yazhou Zhao & Lingjie Kong & Wenjun Peng, 2022. "Division of Labor among Worker Bees Is Associated with the Lipidomic Plasticity in Their Brains," Agriculture, MDPI, vol. 12(7), pages 1-19, June.
    • Handle: RePEc:gam:jagris:v:12:y:2022:i:7:p:952-:d:853123
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2077-0472/12/7/952/pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2077-0472/12/7/952/
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:gam:jagris:v:12:y:2022:i:7:p:952-:d:853123. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: MDPI Indexing Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.mdpi.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.