Using a combination of CRISPR/Cas9, behavioural experiments and functional analysis to characterise taste receptors in honeybees

Abstract

Honeybees (Apis mellifera) need their fine sense of taste to evaluate nectar and pollen sources. Gustatory receptors (Grs) translate taste signals into electrical responses. In vivo experiments primarily demonstrate collective responses of the whole Gr-set, but little is known about the individual impact of receptors. Here, we disentangle for the first time the contributions of three gustatory receptors (AmGr1-3) in sugar sensing of honeybees by combining CRISPR/Cas9 mediated genetic knock-out, electrophysiology and behaviour. AmGr1 responds to multiple sugars. Bees lacking this receptor have a reduced response to sucrose and glucose but not to fructose. AmGr2 acts as co-receptor of AmGr1 in a heterologous expression system, but honeybee knock-out mutants perform normally. Eliminating AmGr3 while preserving AmGr1 and AmGr2 abolishes the perception of fructose but not of sucrose. We thus dissociate the roles of AmGr1, AmGr2 and AmGr3 in honeybee taste perception.

Revealing phosphorylation regulatory networks during embryogenesis of honey bee worker and drone (Apis mellifera)

“…Due to the easily accessible conditions for embryonic development (34°C temperature, 80% relative humidity) ( Nelson, 1915 ; Winston, 1987 ), the embryo is an ideal model used in honey bee genetic research ( DuPraw, 1967 ). Several works have been reported to understand honey bee embryonic development from describing morphology to dissecting molecular underpinnings, such as detailed morphological differentiation ( Fleig and Sander, 1986a ; Woyke, 1998 ; Katzav-Gozansky et al, 2003 ), transcriptional modification ( Pires et al, 2016 ; Netschitailo et al, 2022 ), and genome editing ( Kohno et al, 2016 ; Hu et al, 2019 ; Nie et al, 2021 ; Wang et al, 2021 ; Değirmenci et al, 2022 ). Recently, our works on proteomics elucidated that embryos at different ages have tailored distinct proteome arsenals to underline the age-specific physiological demands of honey bees ( Fang et al, 2014 ; Fang et al, 2015 ).…”