The effect of the brood and the queen on early gene expression in bumble bee workers' brains

We used RNA-se to compare gene expression patterns in workers of the bumble bee Bombus impatiens in response to the queen, the brood, both or none. Pairs of newly emerged bumble bee workers were assigned to four treatments and kept for three days with the queen (CQ), young brood (CB), the queen and young brood (CBQ), or alone (C). RNA was isolated from brain tissue and six replicates per treatment were sequenced on three Illumina NextSeq 550 High Output, 75 nt single read sequencing, runs.