Prenatal sonographic identification of endocardial cushion defects in association with shortening of the long bones should alert clinicians to the possibility of EvC syndrome and prompt a careful search of hexadactyly of the hands. Molecular analysis of the EVC and EVC2 genes is helpful in genetic counseling in cases with prenatally detected postaxial polydactyly, thoracic narrowness, short limbs and endocardial cushion defects.

Fluorescence in situ hybridization and array comparative genomic hybridization are useful to determine the nature of a prenatally detected aberrant chromosome derived from the inv dup del. Male fetuses with inv dup del(9p) and haploinsufficiency of DMRT1 and DMRT3 may present normal male external genitalia without sex reversal.

Iron granules containing superparamagnetic magnetite act as magnetoreceptor for magnetoreception in honey bees. Biomineralization of iron granules occurs in the iron deposition vesicles of trophocytes and requires the participation of actin, myosin, ferritin2, and ATP synthase. The mechanism of magnetoreception in honey bees can be explored by suppressing the formation of iron granules. Toward this goal, we injected double-stranded RNA of ferritin2 and ferritin1 into newly emerged worker honey bees to knock down these genes via RNA interference. We confirmed that mRNA and protein production of the ferritins was inhibited, leading to immature iron granules. Downregulating ferritin2 and ferritin1 , moreover, leads to different deposition morphology of 7.5-nm diameter iron particles, indicating that the two genes play different roles in the formation of iron granules in worker honey bees.

Queen honeybees (Apis mellifera) have a much longer lifespan than worker bees. Whether cellular degradation activity is involved in the longevity of queen bees is unknown. In the present study, cellular degradation activity was evaluated in the trophocytes and oenocytes of young and old queen bees. The results indicated that (i) 20S proteasome activity and the size of autophagic vacuoles decreased with aging, and (ii) there were no significant differences between young and old queen bees with regard to 20S proteasome expression or efficiency, polyubiquitin aggregate expression, microtubule-associated protein 1 light chain 3-II (LC3-II) expression, 70 kDa heat shock cognate protein (Hsc70) expression, the density of autophagic vacuoles, p62/SQSTM1 expression, the activity or density of lysosomes, or molecular target of rapamycin expression. These results indicate that cellular degradation activity maintains a youthful status in the trophocytes and oenocytes of queen bees during aging and that cellular degradation activity is involved in maintaining the longevity of queen bees.