Transcriptome analysis of Apis mellifera under benomyl stress to discriminate the gene expression in response to development and immune systems

Abstract

The health and safety of the honeybees are seriously threatened due to the abuse of chemical pesticides in modern agriculture and apiculture. In this study, the RNA Seq approach was used to assess the effects of the honeybees treated with benomyl. The results showed that there were a total of 11,902 differentially expressed genes (DEGs). Among them, 5,759 DEGs were up-regulated and involved in the functions of immunity, detoxification, biological metabolism, and regulation. The DEGs were clustered in the GO terms of epidermal structure and response to external stimuli, and most of the DEGs were enriched in 15 pathways, such as light conduction, MAPK, calcium ion pathway, and so on. Moreover, the pathway of the toll signal transduction was activated. The data investigated that the expression of functional genes involved in the growth, development, foraging, and immunity of honeybees were significantly affected by benomyl stress, which would seriously threaten the health of the honeybees. This study provided a theoretical basis for revealing the response mechanism of honeybees to pesticides stress.

Keywords:

• Apis mellifera
• transcriptome analysis
• benomyl stress
• differentially expressed genes

Acknowledgements

This work was supported by Key Research and Development Plan of Anui Province (202104a06020063); the Project of Science and Technology Innovation Team of Anhui Academy of Agricultural Sciences (2021YL077).

Author contributions

Each author has participated sufficiently in the work to take public responsibility for appropriate portions of the content. Junjun Dai: Conceptualization, funding acquisition, and project administration. Rui Shu: Investigation and validation. Jian Liu: Data curation. Jiafeng Xia: Software and data curation. Xiasen Jiang: Review and editing. Ping Zhao: Resources.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Key Research and Development Plan of Anhui Province (202104a06020063); the Project of Science and Technology Innovation Team of Anhui Academy of Agricultural Sciences (2021YL077).