Data from: Transcriptional markers of sub-optimal nutrition in developing Apis mellifera nurse workers

Background: Honey bees (Apis mellifera) contribute substantially to the
worldwide economy and ecosystem health as pollinators. Pollen is essential
to the bee’s diet, providing protein, lipids, and micronutrients. The
dramatic shifts in physiology, anatomy, and behavior that accompany normal
worker development are highly plastic and recent work demonstrates that
development, particularly the transition from nurse to foraging roles, is
greatly impacted by diet. However, the role that diet plays in the
developmental transition of newly eclosed bees to nurse workers is poorly
understood. To further understand honey bee nutrition and the role of diet
in nurse development, we used a high-throughput screen of the
transcriptome of 3 day and 8 day old worker bees fed either honey and
stored pollen (rich diet) or honey alone (poor diet) within the hive. We
employed a three factor (age, diet, age x diet) analysis of the
transcriptome to determine whether diet affected nurse worker physiology
and whether poor diet altered the developmental processes normally
associated with aging. Results: Substantial changes in gene expression
occurred due to starvation. Diet-induced changes in gene transcription
occurring in younger bees were largely a subset of those occurring in
older bees, but certain signatures of starvation were only evident 8 day
old workers. Of the 18,542 annotated genes in the A. mellifera genome,
0.7% (126 genes) exhibited differential expression due to poor diet at 3d
of age compared with 81% (15,001 genes) that differed due to poor diet at
8d of age. Of the genes that were differentially expressed in young or old
pollen deprived bees, poor diet caused more frequent down-regulation of
gene expression in younger bees compared to older bees. In addition, the
age-related physiological changes that accompanied early adult development
differed due to the diet these young adult bees were fed. More frequent
down-regulation of gene expression was observed in developing bees fed a
poor diet compared to an adequate diet. Functional analyses also show that
the physiological and developmental processes occurring in well-fed bees
are vastly different than those occurring in pollen deprived bees. These
data support the hypothesis that poor diet causes normal age-related
development to go awry. Conclusion: Poor nutrition has major consequences
for the expression of genes underlying the physiology and age-related
development of nurse worker bees. More work is certainly needed to fully
understand the consequences of starvation and the complex biology of
nutrition and development in this system, but the genes identified in the
present study provide a starting point for understanding the consequences
of poor diet and for mitigating the economic costs of colony starvation.