Genomic comparison of the ants Camponotus floridanus and Harpegnathos saltator.
PMID 20798317 · Science (New York, N.Y.) · 2010 · DOI 10.1126/science.1192428
Authors: Roberto Bonasio; Guojie Zhang; Chaoyang Ye; Navdeep S Mutti; Xiaodong Fang; Nan Qin; Greg Donahue; Pengcheng Yang; Qiye Li; Cai Li; Pei Zhang; Zhiyong Huang; Shelley L Berger; Danny Reinberg; Jun Wang; Jürgen Liebig
Abstract
The organized societies of ants include short-lived worker castes displaying specialized behavior and morphology and long-lived queens dedicated to reproduction. We sequenced and compared the genomes of two socially divergent ant species: Camponotus floridanus and Harpegnathos saltator. Both genomes contained high amounts of CpG, despite the presence of DNA methylation, which in non-Hymenoptera correlates with CpG depletion. Comparison of gene expression in different castes identified up-regulation of telomerase and sirtuin deacetylases in longer-lived H. saltator reproductives, caste-specific expression of microRNAs and SMYD histone methyltransferases, and differential regulation of genes implicated in neuronal function and chemical communication. Our findings provide clues on the molecular differences between castes in these two ants and establish a new experimental model to study epigenetics in aging and behavior.
Aging; Amino Acid Sequence; Animals; Ants; Behavior, Animal; DNA; Dinucleoside Phosphates; Epigenesis, Genetic; Gene Expression Profiling; Gene Expression Regulation; Genes, Insect; Genome; Group III Histone Deacetylases; Hydrocarbons; Insect Proteins; MicroRNAs; Molecular Sequence Data; Protein Methyltransferases; Proteome; Repetitive Sequences, Nucleic Acid; Sequence Analysis, DNA; Social Behavior; Species Specificity; Telomerase
Cite
Roberto Bonasio; Guojie Zhang; Chaoyang Ye; Navdeep S Mutti; Xiaodong Fang; Nan Qin; Greg Donahue; Pengcheng Yang; Qiye Li; Cai Li; Pei Zhang; Zhiyong Huang; Shelley L Berger; Danny Reinberg; Jun Wang; Jürgen Liebig. Genomic comparison of the ants Camponotus floridanus and Harpegnathos saltator. Science (New York, N.Y.) (2010). PMID 20798317. DOI 10.1126/science.1192428.