Epigenetic integration of environmental and genomic signals in honey bees

The discovery of a family of highly conserved DNA cytosine methylases in honey bees and other insects suggests that, like mammals, invertebrates possess a mechanism for storing epigenetic information that controls heritable states of gene expression. Recent data also show that silencing DNA methylation in young larvae mimics the effects of nutrition on early developmental processes that determine the reproductive fate of honey bee females. We evaluate the impact of these findings on future studies of environmentally-driven phenotypic plasticity in social insects, and discuss how they may help in understanding the nutritional basis of epigenetic reprogramming in humans.