Immediate early gene kakusei potentially plays a role in the daily foraging of honey bees.

Abstract

kakusei is a non-coding RNA that is overexpressed in foraging bee brain. This study describes a possible role of the IEG kakusei during the daily foraging of honey bees. kakusei was found to be transiently upregulated within two hours during rewarded foraging. Interestingly, during unrewarded foraging the gene was also found to be up-regulated, but immediately lowered when food was not rewarded. Moreover, the kakusei overexpression was diminished within a very short time when the time schedule of feeding was changed. This indicates the potential role of kakusei on the motivation of learned reward foraging. These results provide evidence for a dynamic role of kakusei during for aging of bees, and eventually its possible involvement in learning and memory. Thus the kakusei gene could be used as search tool in finding distinct molecular pathways that mediate diverse behavioral components of foraging.