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Honey bee (Apis mellifera) drones survive oxidative stress due to increased tolerance instead of avoidance or repair of oxidative damage - PubMed

Honey bee (Apis mellifera) drones survive oxidative stress due to increased tolerance instead of avoidance or repair of oxidative damage

Hongmei Li-Byarlay et al. Exp Gerontol. 2016 Oct.

Abstract

Oxidative stress can lead to premature aging symptoms and cause acute mortality at higher doses in a range of organisms. Oxidative stress resistance and longevity are mechanistically and phenotypically linked; considerable variation in oxidative stress resistance exists among and within species and typically covaries with life expectancy. However, it is unclear whether stress-resistant, long-lived individuals avoid, repair, or tolerate molecular damage to survive longer than others. The honey bee (Apis mellifera L.) is an emerging model system that is well-suited to address this question. Furthermore, this species is the most economically important pollinator, whose health may be compromised by pesticide exposure, including oxidative stressors. Here, we develop a protocol for inducing oxidative stress in honey bee males (drones) via Paraquat injection. After injection, individuals from different colony sources were kept in common social conditions to monitor their survival compared to saline-injected controls. Oxidative stress was measured in susceptible and resistant individuals. Paraquat drastically reduced survival but individuals varied in their resistance to treatment within and among colony sources. Longer-lived individuals exhibited higher levels of lipid peroxidation than individuals dying early. In contrast, the level of protein carbonylation was not significantly different between the two groups. This first study of oxidative stress in male honey bees suggests that survival of an acute oxidative stressor is due to tolerance, not prevention or repair, of oxidative damage to lipids. It also demonstrates colony differences in oxidative stress resistance that might be useful for breeding stress-resistant honey bees.

Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

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Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1

Survival of saline-injected (dotted line) and paraquat-injected (solid line) drones. A total of 48 control and 489 treated drones were included and survival was signficantly higher in the control group. Post-injection time was defined as the time between the injection and the periodic surveys of the cohorts that were performed at different times for different replicates.

Figure 2
Figure 2

Oxidative stress levels measured by TBARS assay of saline-injected and paraquat-injected drones. The paraquat-injected drones were further divided into two groups based on whether they died rapidly after paraquat injection (low-resistant) or resisted paraquat-induced oxidative stress (high-resistant). The three experimental groups were significantly different (P=0.0009) and letters indicate which post-hoc pairwise comparisons were significantly different. The black dot represents the mean, the line shows the median with the 1st and 3rd quartiles making up the rest of the rectangle and small open circle indicate statistical outliers.

Figure 3
Figure 3

Oxidative stress levels of control, low-resistant and high-resistant drones, measured as the relative quantity of protein carbonyls formed (Pro Carb). No significant difference was found among the three experimental groups. The black dot represents the mean, the line shows the median with the 1st and 3rd quartiles making up the rest of the rectangle and small open circle indicate statistical outliers.

Figure 4
Figure 4

Survival of paraquat injected drones differed significantly among source colonies but not according to cage replicates (not shown). Sample size for each source colony is listed next to the respective cumulative survival curve. Post-injection time was defined as the time between the injection and the periodic surveys of experimental cohorts that were performed at different times for different replicates.

Figure 5
Figure 5

Comparison of lipid peroxidation levels among the four major drone sources used in the study. Lipid peroxidation, measured as the concentration of malondialdehyde (MDA), was normalized by the total concentration of soluble proteins (BCA) in each sample. Overall, colony source affected lipid peroxidation significantly. In particular, we measured higher levels in the D65 than in the D52 and D57 colony. The black dot represents the mean, the line shows the median with the 1st and 3rd quartiles making up the rest of the rectangle and small open circle indicate statistical outliers.

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