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. 2011 Apr 26;6(4):e18808.
doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0018808.

Diet and cell size both affect queen-worker differentiation through DNA methylation in honey bees (Apis mellifera, Apidae)

Yuan Yuan Shi  1 , Zachary Y Huang, Zhi Jiang Zeng, Zi Long Wang, Xiao Bo Wu, Wei Yu Yan
Affiliations

Diet and cell size both affect queen-worker differentiation through DNA methylation in honey bees (Apis mellifera, Apidae)

Yuan Yuan Shi et al. PLoS One. .

Abstract

Background: Young larvae of the honey bee (Apis mellifera) are totipotent; they can become either queens (reproductives) or workers (largely sterile helpers). DNA methylation has been shown to play an important role in this differentiation. In this study, we examine the contributions of diet and cell size to caste differentiation.

Methodology/principal findings: We measured the activity and gene expression of one key enzyme involved in methylation, Dnmt3; the rates of methylation in the gene dynactin p62; as well as morphological characteristics of adult bees developed either from larvae fed with worker jelly or royal jelly; and larvae raised in either queen or worker cells. We show that both diet type and cell size contributed to the queen-worker differentiation, and that the two factors affected different methylation sites inside the same gene dynactin p62.

Conclusions/significance: We confirm previous findings that Dnmt3 plays a critical role in honey bee caste differentiation. Further, we show for the first time that cell size also plays a role in influencing larval development when diet is kept the same.

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Conflict of interest statement

Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1. Schematic diagram showing primer locations, exons (top) and CpG sites within the various exons (bottom) in the gene dynactin p62.
Polymerase chain reaction primers were designed to cover most of the CpG sites, except those in exons 6 and 9. Numbers 1–14 refer to locations of the CpG sites, and underlining highlights those units with two CpG sites tested at the same time. For CpG 9 and 13, we did not detect any methylation and they were not reported in Table 1.
Figure 2
Figure 2. Effect of feeding larvae with 3, 4, or 5 days of royal jelly.
Shown are Dnmt3 enzyme activity in mmol/min (A), Dnmt gene expression (B) relative to a reference gene calmodulin, and percentage of methylation in the gene dynactin p62 (C) in 6-day old larvae and percentage of adults classified as queens, intercastes, or workers (D). Different letters on top of bars indicate significant difference (P<0.05) among the treatments with Fisher's Protected Least Significant Difference after analysis of variance showed a significant overall effect (P<0.05, A–C), or contingency table analysis with X2 (P<0.05) as the test statistic (D). In D, all comparisons are among different days, not among different castes within a single day. Data for Dnmt3 activity (A) were transformed by square root transformation; Dmnt3 expression (B) and percent methylation (C) were analyzed after arcsin transformation and presented here after transformation.
Figure 3
Figure 3. Effect of cell size on honey bee larvae.
Shown are Dnmt3 enzyme activity in mmol/min (A, D), Dnmt3 gene expression (B, E) relative to a reference gene calmodulin, percentage of methylation in the gene dynactin p62 (C, F) in 3-day (left) and 5-day old larvae (right), and percentage of adults emerged as workers (G). The non workers here (19% for queen cells) were all intercastes. Data analysis and transformation were the same as Fig. 2.
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