Genome-wide analysis of coding and non-coding RNAs in ovary of honey bee workers

The present study is the first study to identify the involvement of mRNA, lncRNAs, circRNAs and miRNA in the ovary of honey-bee workers.We predicted 10271 mRNAs, 7235 lncRNAs, 11794 circRNAs and 164 miRNAs in the ovary of honey bee workers. To identify the involvement of mRNAs, lncRNAs, circRNAs and miRNAs in the ovary of honey-bee workers, Pools of honey bee workers’ ovaries were used in this study (N=3). Ovaries of worker bees sampling were carried out according to the procedure of Macedo, with minor modifications (Macedo et al. 2016). Briefly, 5 colonies with sister queens were reared using standard beekeeping techniques (Harbo 1986). The frames with emerging broods from these colonies were placed in an incubator (34 ℃ and 80% relative humidity). Newly emerged workers were paint marked and returned to their original colony. After 4 days, the marked workers were collected. Their ovaries were dissected, snap frozen in liquid nitrogen and stored at -80 ℃. For each biological sample, 40 ovary pairs were dissected from workers of one single colony. Totally, three samples were used for RNAseq.