Journal
INSECT MOLECULAR BIOLOGY
Volume 15, Issue 5, Pages 645-656Publisher
WILEY
DOI: 10.1111/j.1365-2583.2006.00682.x
Keywords
innate immunity; comparative genomics; antimicrobial peptide; American foulbrood
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Funding
- NIGMS NIH HHS [R37 GM041247] Funding Source: Medline
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Social insects are able to mount both group-level and individual defences against pathogens. Here we focus on individual defences, by presenting a genome-wide analysis of immunity in a social insect, the honey bee Apis mellifera. We present honey bee models for each of four signalling pathways associated with immunity, identifying plausible orthologues for nearly all predicted pathway members. When compared to the sequenced Drosophila and Anopheles genomes, honey bees possess roughly one-third as many genes in 17 gene families implicated in insect immunity. We suggest that an implied reduction in immune flexibility in bees reflects either the strength of social barriers to disease, or a tendency for bees to be attacked by a limited set of highly coevolved pathogens.
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