Abstract:

【Objective】 To investige into the differentially expressed proteins between the honeybee (Apis mellifera L.) worker and queens larvae , the proteome profiling of the workers and the queens were compared on day 3, day 5 and day 11 during the developmental process of the honeybee caste differentiation. 【Method】 Two-dimensional gel electrophoresis (2-DE) was employed to set up protein profiling of the queens and the workers during their eleven days development. Then the protein abundance, molecular weight and pI were analyzed. 【Result】 Totally, 288 and 274 proteins were detected in the proteome profile of queens on day 3 and day 5, respectively, which is significantly higher than those detected in workers ( 259 and 236, accordingly). And in the head of 11-day pupae, also evidently higher number of total proteins (311) was detected in queens than those of workers (278). On the third day, 156 proteins were presented in both queens and workers larvae, while 132 proteins were specific to queens larvae, and 103 proteins were exclusive to workers larvae. While on the fifths day, larvae of queens and workers had 95 shared proteins, and 179 proteins were specific to queen larvae and 141 proteins to workers larvae. Until the eleventh day, 194 proteins were resolved in the head of queen and workers, while 117 and 84 proteins were unique to the heads of queen and workers, respectively.【Conclusion】 Significant differences were found in the proteome between queens and workers during the process of caste differentiation. While the increased number of total and specific proteins in queens showed that the metabolic rate and gene expression of queens is higher than those of workers. The proteins both in queens and workers suggest that they should be indispensable for caste development, but their expression patterns are different between two bee castes. The protein specifically expressed at each time-point indicate that different caste developmental stages need specific proteins to be involved in.

Key words: honeybee (Apis mellifera L.), caste differentiation, two-dimensional gel electrophoresis, proteome