Research Stories

by Dan Jenk

Evolution is quite the process. Arizona State University scientists have new evidence that evolution may have taught old genes new tricks. The findings are part of work dedicated to studying the development of social behavior in honeybees.

Gro Amdam and her colleagues at the School of Life Sciences (SOLS) are deciphering the genetic basis of social behavior in the honeybee, Apis mellifera. Amdam is an assistant professor at the school. She says that a newly completed honeybee genome sequence is helping their work.

Robert Page is the founding director of SOLS. He and Amdam were part of a consortium of researchers that sequenced and analyzed the honeybee genome. The results of their work were reported in the October 26, 2006 issue of Nature, an international science journal.

Amdam says that the honeybee is a particularly well-suited organism for studying the genetic basis and evolution of social behavior.

"Professor Page first determined that the genetic recombination rate in Apis mellifera is the highest of all animals. It is about 10 times greater than that of flies or humans," she explains.

Genetic recombination is a natural process that involves the shuffling of DNA. The ASU scientists used that process to their advantage in mapping behavior precisely to genome regions.

Genes are normally "shuffled around" in each generation of honeybee. The more frequently the genes are shuffled, says Amdam, the smaller the identified region and the better chance the researchers have of identifying specific genes related to behavior.

"We thought we would find many new genes responsible for social behavior in the honeybee genome," Amdam says. "However, we didn't find much diversification of such social genes. In fact, the number of honeybee genes overall was smaller than that found in the genome of the fly, which has a solitary lifestyle."

The scientists explain that the relatively small number of genes may be a reflection of the highly specialized and self-managed life of the honeybee.

Research on social insects is supported by the National Science Foundation. For more information, visit the School of Life Sciences