A unique case .. only one gene in a honeybee

Tariq Kabil

The concept of reproduction in our minds is associated with the presence of a male and a female as a prerequisite for completing the reproductive process. Indeed, this is the prevailing situation, but as for every exception rule, virgin reproduction occurs when the fetus develops without fertilization.

According to the study, published by the journal Current Biology on May 7, researchers from the University of Sydney have made a groundbreaking discovery, identifying the only gene that enables bees to reproduce asexually without the need for sex.

The new discovery not only answers a decades-old question, but it can have major implications in studying pest control of other species.

Cape honey bees
The genus of honey bees is characterized by its creation of perennial hives, and there are about 20 thousand species of bees spread throughout the world, which in turn is divided into several strains.

Apis mellifera capensis is inhabited in South Africa, and the most characteristic of this type of bee is that the worker bees can reproduce with a special kind of virgin reproduction, whereas in regular bee kingdoms the queen produces all the eggs that all the cell members produce.

The only thing that keeps the peace most of the time in the beehive is the smell of calming pheromones from the mandibular glands of the legitimate queen, but if the queen dies, the workers compete to confirm the genital dominance in the colony by using two massive ovaries to produce the queen pheromones.

"When the Queen's colony is lost, the maid fights and competes to become the next queen's mother, and instead of forming a cooperative community, Cape Beek colonies are torn apart by conflicts because any maid may be genetically embodied as an upcoming queen," said behavioral geneticist Benjamin Oldroid.

Sometimes, a worker with lofty goals may go to another colony of bees, and try her luck to become a `` false '' queen, by forcing the other bees to raise their offspring, all of whom look exactly like them.

Female virgin
reproduction is a form of asexual reproduction in animals, invertebrates and most of the lower plants. Cape honey bees are the only unique species that reproduce through a process called female virgin reproduction.

This process allows bees to produce worker bees without having sex by laying eggs to hatch without fertilization or mating, to produce entire offspring of females when the colony needs workers or a new queen.

Although these capabilities have been known for more than a century, only advanced genomic tools have now enabled scientists to explore the causes of this.

Oldroid and his team took advantage of these techniques to determine the gene called ( GB45239 ), on chromosome number 11, which allows these early deliveries.

This gene alters the ability of Cape bees to create eggs that enable them to continue to grow into a new adult insect that is genetically identical, probably by affecting how the chromosomes separate.

Solving the mystery and its consequences
The research team succeeded in finding the secret of this virgin reproduction by crossbreeding Cape bees with honeybees from East Africa, which lacks this phenomenon, and genetic markers have been compared between generations.

"It's very exciting," says Oldroid. "Scientists have been searching for this gene for 30 years, and now that we know it's on chromosome 11, we've solved a mystery."

Scientists hope that this result leads to knowledge of how the gene actually works, which may lead to research on ways to turn it on or off for various purposes.

One example is the control of groups of pests such as fire ants, which also involve bees in the process of virgin reproduction, but through a different gene.