Fire ant alate virgin and de-alate mated queen brain transcriptomes

Transcriptomes of dissected brains from alate virgin and de-alate mated queens from polygyne fire ants were analyzed and compared. Four replicates of each condition were obtained. Thirteen genes were upregulated in mated queen brain and nine were downregulated. We found that for four differentially expressed genes in brain selected for qPCR analyses, changes in gene expression were most likely driven by the changes in physiological state (i.e. age, nutritional status or dominance rank) or in social environment (released from influence of primer pheromone). Overall design: Fire ant brain mRNA profiles of de-alate mated and alate virgin queens were generated by deep sequencing of four replicates per condition, using Illumina.