Become a worker bee or queen in the hands of vegetable microRNA
Text created by automatic translator Elia and has not been subsequently revised by translators. Elia Elhuyar
Queen bee, surrounded by workers. Ed. Jessica Lawrence, Eurofins Agroscience Services/CC-BY 3.0
It is known that the feeding of bees is key in their separation: workers and erlamands feed on honey and pollen, while queens or erlamas only take the royal jelly. However, they did not know the mechanism by which food influenced this differentiation. Now, researchers at Nakin University (China) have discovered that the microRNA of the plants fed makes the bees become workers.
The study has shown that the microRNA of some plants limits the growth of working bees and inactivates female eggs. Since royal jelly has less microRNA than the mixture of honey and pollen that other bees eat, the queen bee is large and abundant. The results of the study have been published in the journal PLOS GeneticsZu idazle
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