Vitellogenin, juvenile hormone, insulin signaling, and queen honey bee longevity

cappuccion submitted, created time 1 year 8 months (www.pnas.org)

In most animals, longevity is achieved at the expense of fertility, but queen honey bees do not show this tradeoff. Queens are both long-lived and fertile, whereas workers, derived from the same genome, are both relatively short-lived and normally sterile. It has been suggested, on the basis of results from workers, that vitellogenin (Vg), best known as a yolk protein synthesized in the abdominal fat body, acts as an antioxidant to promote longevity in queen bees. The experiment result support the hypothesis that caste-specific differences in Vg expression are involved in queen longevity

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