Abstract
Food choice and eating behavior affect health and longevity. Large-scale research efforts aim to understand the molecular and social/behavioral mechanisms of energy homeostasis, body weight, and food intake. Honey bees (Apis mellifera) could provide a model for these studies since individuals vary in food-related behavior and social factors can be controlled. Here, we examine a potential role of peripheral insulin receptor substrate (IRS) expression in honey bee foraging behavior. IRS is central to cellular nutrient sensing through transduction of insulin/insulin-like signals (IIS). By reducing peripheral IRS gene expression and IRS protein amount with the use of RNA interference (RNAi), we demonstrate that IRS influences foraging choice in two standard strains selected for different food-hoarding behavior. Compared with controls, IRS knockdowns bias their foraging effort toward protein (pollen) rather than toward carbohydrate (nectar) sources. Through control experiments, we establish that IRS does not influence the bees' sucrose sensory response, a modality that is generally associated with food-related behavior and specifically correlated with the foraging preference of honey bees. These results reveal a new affector pathway of honey bee social foraging, and suggest that IRS expressed in peripheral tissue can modulate an insect's foraging choice between protein and carbohydrate sources.
Highlights
Multicellular animals have distinct energy demands but can modulate their growth and energy consumption in response to nutrient availability [1,2]
The insight that molecules from the body can bind to brain cells and signal and change food-related behavior is of biomedical interest. One such molecule is insulin, which binds to cells via receptors attached to the insulin receptor substrate protein, IRS
Insulin-like systems are found in all multi-cellular animals, and receptors with IRS are found in many cell types, including fat and muscle where receptor-binding regulates glucose uptake
Summary
Multicellular animals have distinct energy demands but can modulate their growth and energy consumption in response to nutrient availability [1,2] This state of metabolic homeostasis is central to health and lifespan. Food-related behavior is influenced by several factors, including age [5], sex and reproductive physiology [6], genotype [7], sensory perception [8,9], and environment or social setting [10] Many of these factors interact in complex ways to affect behavior [11,12,13], and the underlying cause-effect relationships are challenging to test. Similar relationships are found in highly manipulable insect models where metabolic biology shows considerable homology to mammalian systems [14]
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