Functional genomics of Apis mellifera: search for new genes and functional networks in the context of development, different castes and reproduction

Abstract

With an active contribution (5021 ORESTES, deposited in the GenBank) and participation in the annotation of the recently sequenced genome of the honey bee our group now has consolidated knowledge and expertise in all aspects required for large-scale analyses of gene expression in honey bees. Following our long term questions of interest on mechanisms underlying caste and sex determination and those involved in reproduction and division of labor, already formulated in the pré-genomic era of honey bee research, we are now proposing a large-scale analysis of gene expression in different phases of the honey bee life cycle. We will focus on the following questions: the identification of genes involved in caste development, in programmed cell death of the larval ovary, in integument differentiation, in the activation of the adult ovary of queens and workers, in the functional cycle of the hypopharyngeal glands, and in early embryonic sex determination. In addition, we will screen our libraries for putative micro-RNAs to unveil the participation of this novel group of post-transcriptional regulators in the above contexts. The project adopts a dual strategy, a) the identification of candidate genes in the honey bee genome based on prior knowledge of gene function in other organisms, especially Gene Ontology attributes registered in flybase, and b) the search for novel genes by microarrays, subtractive hybridization strategies, and the generation of an embryonic cDNA library. The differential expression of all these genes will be tested and candidates of specific interest will be investigated by quantitative RT-PCR and silencing by RNAi. The joint information on gene expression in these contexts will be subjected to network analysis in order to detect functional linkage and organization in gene expression networks. (AU)