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Activity of telomerase and telomeric length in Apis mellifera

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Abstract

Telomerase is an enzyme that adds repeats of DNA sequences to the ends of chromosomes, thereby preventing their shortening. Telomerase activity is associated with proliferative status of cells, organismal development, and aging. We report an analysis of telomerase activity and telomere length in the honeybee, Apis mellifera. Telomerase activity was found to be regulated in a development and caste-specific manner. During the development of somatic tissues of larval drones and workers, telomerase activity declined to 10 % of its level in embryos and remained low during pupal and adult stages but was upregulated in testes of late pupae, where it reached 70 % of the embryo level. Upregulation of telomerase activity was observed in the ovaries of late pupal queens, reaching 160 % of the level in embryos. Compared to workers and drones, queens displayed higher levels of telomerase activity. In the third larval instar of queens, telomerase activity reached the embryo level, and an enormous increase was observed in adult brains of queens, showing a 70-fold increase compared to a brain of an adult worker. Southern hybridization of terminal TTAGG fragments revealed a high variability of telomeric length between different individuals, although the same pattern of hybridization signals was observed in different tissues of each individual.

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Acknowledgments

We are grateful to James Mason for critical reading of the manuscript. We thank Dalibor Titěra, Denisa Pánková, Ivana Bendová, Jan Benda, and Václav Doubek for allowing us to collect honeybee samples. We thank Marie Korchová for technical assistance.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Faculty of Science, University of South Bohemia, České Budějovice, Czech Republic

    Michala Korandová

  2. Institute of Entomology, Biology Centre AS CR, Branišovská 31, České Budějovice, 37005, Czech Republic

    Michala Korandová & Radmila Čapková Frydrychová

Authors
  1. Michala Korandová
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  2. Radmila Čapková Frydrychová
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Radmila Čapková Frydrychová.

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Funding

This work was supported by the Grant No. 14-07172S from the Grant Agency of the Czech Republic, by the Grant No. 052/2013/P from the Grant Agency of the University of South Bohemia, and by additional grants from the Grant Agency of the University of South Bohemia. We acknowledge the use of research infrastructure that has received funding from the European Union Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013) under grant agreement no. 316304.

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Authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

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This article does not contain any studies with human participants or animals performed by any of the authors.

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Fig. S1

Detection of telomerase activity using a polyacrylamide gel. The TRAP assay was performed in protein extract of embryos (extract 1) and head of adult worker (extract 2). The TRAP products were run in a 15 % polyacrylamide gel and stained with SYBR-Green I. Samples treated with RNase A were used as negative controls. (TIFF 695 kb)

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Korandová, M., Frydrychová, R.Č. Activity of telomerase and telomeric length in Apis mellifera . Chromosoma 125, 405–411 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00412-015-0547-4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00412-015-0547-4

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