Worker Honeybee Brain Proteome

A large-scale mapping of the worker honeybee brain proteome
was
achieved by MudPIT. We identified 2742 proteins from forager and nurse
honeybee brain samples; 17% of the total proteins were found to be
differentially expressed by spectral count sampling statistics and
a G-test. Sequences were compared with the EuKaryotic Orthologous
Groups (KOG) catalog set using BLASTX and then categorized into the
major KOG categories of most similar sequences. According to this
categorization, nurse brain showed increased expression of proteins
implicated in translation, ribosomal structure, and biogenesis (14.5%)
compared with forager (1.8%). Experienced foragers overexpressed proteins
involved in energy production and conversion, showing an extensive
difference in this set of proteins (17%) in relation to the nurse
subcaste (0.6%). Examples of proteins selectively expressed in each
subcaste were analyzed. A comparison between these MudPIT experiments
and previous 2-DE experiments revealed nine coincident proteins differentially
expressed in both methodologies.