Transcriptional response of honey bee (Apis mellifera) to differential nutritional status and Nosema infection

Abstract

BackgroundBees are confronting several environmental challenges, including the intermingled effects of malnutrition and disease. Intuitively, pollen is the healthiest nutritional choice, however, commercial substitutes, such as Bee-Pro and MegaBee, are widely used. Herein we examined how feeding natural and artificial diets shapes transcription in the abdomen of the honey bee, and how transcription shifts in combination with Nosema parasitism.ResultsGene ontology enrichment revealed that, compared with poor diet (carbohydrates [C]), bees fed pollen (P > C), Bee-Pro (B > C), and MegaBee (M > C) showed a broad upregulation of metabolic processes, especially lipids; however, pollen feeding promoted more functions, and superior proteolysis. The superiority of the pollen diet was also evident through the remarkable overexpression of vitellogenin in bees fed pollen instead of MegaBee or Bee-Pro. Upregulation of bioprocesses under carbohydrates feeding compared to pollen (C > P) provided a clear poor nutritional status, uncovering stark expression changes that were slight or absent relatively to Bee-Pro (C > B) or MegaBee (C > M). Poor diet feeding (C > P) induced starvation response genes and hippo signaling pathway, while it repressed growth through different mechanisms. Carbohydrate feeding (C > P) also elicited ‘adult behavior’, and developmental processes suggesting transition to foraging. Finally, it altered the ‘circadian rhythm’, reflecting the role of this mechanism in the adaptation to nutritional stress in mammals.Nosema-infected bees fed pollen compared to carbohydrates (PN > CN) upheld certain bioprocesses of uninfected bees (P > C). Poor nutritional status was more apparent against pollen (CN > PN) than Bee-Pro (CN > BN) or MegaBee (CN > MN). Nosema accentuated the effects of malnutrition since more starvation-response genes and stress response mechanisms were upregulated in CN > PN compared to C > P. The bioprocess ‘Macromolecular complex assembly’ was also enriched in CN > PN, and involved genes associated with human HIV and/or influenza, thus providing potential candidates for bee-Nosema interactions. Finally, the enzyme Duox emerged as essential for guts defense in bees, similarly to Drosophila.ConclusionsThese results provide evidence of the superior nutritional status of bees fed pollen instead of artificial substitutes in terms of overall health, even in the presence of a pathogen.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (10.1186/s12864-018-5007-0) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

Honey Bee Proteome Responses to Plant and Cyanobacteria (blue-green algae) Diets

“…44 Proteomic studies in honey bees thus far have been largely aimed at understanding developmental physiology 45 and behavior. 46 While high-throughput genomics tools have been used to investigate effects of nutrition on bee metabolism and homeostasis, 26,47,48 molecular mechanisms underlying the impact of artificial diets at the protein level are poorly understood. In this study, we used cage bioassays to compare the effects of different plant and cyanobacteria diets on the honey bee fat body proteome.…”

Effects of different artificial diets on commercial honey bee colony performance, health biomarkers, and gut microbiota

“…Measures of worker bee head and thorax weight are indicators of nutrient assimilation into brood food-producing head glands and flight muscles, respectively. Molecular biomarkers such as mRNA expression of the storage protein vitellogenin (vg) have been used to assess bee nutritional status because vg levels are linked to diet quality [16,[40][41][42][43]. Nutrition also induces changes in the honey bee gut microbiota, with consequences on host immune function and pathogen susceptibility [44][45][46][47].…”

Association between the Microsatellite Ap243, AC117 and SV185 Polymorphisms and Nosema Disease in the Dark Forest Bee Apis mellifera mellifera

“…It should be noted that for two bee subspecies, various microsatellite loci and alleles associated with the Nosema incidence/resistance have been identified, which may be determined by the different resistance of bee subspecies to nosemosis and/or by different habitats of bees (geographic, natural, climatic and nutritional conditions) [ 58 , 79 , 80 , 81 , 82 ]. Perhaps, in addition to the subspecies-specific features to Nosema resistance, the revealed differences can be determined by the structure of the chromosomal region where the QTL is located.…”