posted on 2019-06-06, 08:46authored byP Bebane, B Hunt, M Pegoraro, H Marshall, A Jones, E Rosato, E Mallon
Neonicotinoids are effective insecticides used on many important arable and horticultural crops. They are nicotinic acetylcholine receptor agonists which disrupt the function of insect neurons and cause paralysis and death. In addition to direct mortality, there are numerous sublethal effects of low doses of neonicotinoids on bees. We hypothesize that some of these large array of effects could be a consequence of epigenetic changes in bees induced by neonicotinoids. We compared whole methylome (BS-seq) and RNA-seq libraries of the brains of buff-tailed bumblebee Bombus terrestris workers exposed to field-realistic doses of the neonicotinoid imidacloprid to libraries from control workers. We found numerous genes which show differential expression between neonicotinoid-treated bees and control bees, but no differentially methylated cytosines in any context. We found CpG methylation to be focused mainly in exons and associated with highly expressed genes. We discuss the implications of our results for future legislation.
Funding
EBM, BJH and MP were funded
by NERC grant NE/N010019/1. PSAB was supported by a scholarship from the Human Capacity Development Program (Koya University - Iraq). HM was supported by a NERC CENTA DTP studentship.
ARCJ was supported by a BBSRC MIBTP DTP studentship. This research used the ALICE High
Performance Computing Facility at the University of Leicester.
History
Citation
Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 2019, 286 (1905)
Author affiliation
/Organisation/COLLEGE OF LIFE SCIENCES/Biological Sciences/Genetics and Genome Biology
Version
AM (Accepted Manuscript)
Published in
Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences
Supplementary figures are availible in the supplementary figures file. Supplementary data is available at
https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.6796802.
All sequencing data related to this project can be found under NCBI BioProject PRJNA524132.;The file associated with this record is under embargo until publication, in accordance with the publisher's self-archiving policy. The full text may be available through the publisher links provided above.