Gene-regulatory context of honey bee worker sterility.

摘要: Abstract The highly organized societies of the Western honey bee Apis mellifera feature a reproductive queen at center attention and large cohort daughters that suppress their own reproduction to help rear more sisters, some whom become queens themselves. This altruism is peculiar because in theory it evolves via indirect selection on genes for are expressed sterile workers but not queens. In this study we attempt situate lists previously implicated queenright worker sterility into broader regulatory framework. To do so use model brain transcriptional network as template infer how sets responsive ovary-suppressing pheromone functionally interconnected over model's topology. We predict jointly involved regulation should be tightly networked, relative whose functions unrelated each other. find mapped – ranging size from 17 250 well dispersed across network's substructural scaffolds, suggesting ovary de-activation involves reside within than one module. For sets, however, dispersion biased certain areas substructure. Our analysis identifies regions enriched likewise local hub presumably critical subnetwork function. work offers glimpse gene context uses identify new candidate targets functional analysis. Finally, extent any sterility-related modules identified here have evolved altruism, can assume was type specifically invoked by inclusive fitness theory.