This award is funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Public Law 111-5).
Understanding how genes and environment act through complex biological networks to influence social behavior is a fundamental challenge in biology. This proposal addresses long-duration behavioral 'states' in honey bee workers, which are known to be influenced by many factors including genotype, social and physical environment, nutritional status, physiology (including hormones), neurochemistry, and regulation of gene expression in the brain. Despite knowledge of these multiple influences, there is little understanding of how these factors interact to produce behavioral state in the honey bee or in other analogous behavioral systems. The goal of this proposal is to apply a 'systems' (or holistic) approach to study how a well-defined hormonal system involving the key regulator juvenile hormone interacts with pathways in the brain to influence behavioral state in the honey bee. This will be achieved by perturbing genotype using a genetic cross, then measuring the resulting effects on circulating juvenile hormone level and expression of approximately 11,000 genes in the brain, and behavior. A modeling approach will then be used to explore the network of interactions including causal relationships between particular genetic variations in the genome, juvenile hormone level, brain gene expression, and consequent behavioral state. The honey bee is an economically and ecologically important species that provides a unique combination of attributes facilitating a systems approach. It is economical, has well-studied and easily observed behaviors, and has the necessary genomic resources to conduct a systems approach. By exploiting these attributes, the current study is expected to provide information and important new insight into the genome-hormone-brain network controlling honey bee behavioral state. More generally, it will address broad questions about how genetic variation can influence physiology, brain, and ultimately social behavior. This work also will provide an innovative and valuable training experience for students, including undergraduates, in technologically advanced and integrative biology.
