English (United Kingdom)

https://curated-unify.zendy.io/wp-json/zendy-region/v1/featured_content/oa?rat=en

https://curated-unify.zendy.io/wp-json/zendy-region/v1/highlighted_journal/

Global: Zendy Plus annual

Presents the access of premium content as premium feature

Premium Content

Presents the keyphrase highlighting as premium feature

Keyphrase Highlighting

Presents the summarisation as premium feature

Summarisation

Insights

Presents the pdf analysis as premium feature

PDF Analysis

Presents the zaia usage as premium feature

ZAIA

Global: Zendy Tools annual

Global: Zendy Free Plan

Global: Zendy Tools monthly

Global: Zendy Plus monthly

Insects have evolved a wide range of strategies to combat invading pathogens, including viruses. Genes that encode proteins involved in immune responses often evolve under positive selection due to their co-evolution with pathogens. Insect antiviral defense includes the RNA interference (RNAi) mechanism, which is triggered by recognition of non-self, virally produced, double-stranded RNAs. Indeed, insect RNAi genes (e.g.,  dicer  and  argonaute-2 ) are under high selective pressure. Honey bees ( Apis mellifera ) are eusocial insects that respond to viral infections  via  both sequence specific RNAi and a non-sequence specific dsRNA triggered pathway, which is less well-characterized. A transcriptome-level study of virus-infected and/or dsRNA-treated honey bees revealed increased expression of a novel antiviral gene, GenBank:  MF116383 , and  in vivo  experiments confirmed its antiviral function. Due to  in silico  annotation and sequence similarity, MF116383 was originally annotated as a probable  cyclin-dependent serine/threonine-protein kinase . In this study, we confirmed that MF116383 limits virus infection, and carried out further bioinformatic and phylogenetic analyses to better characterize this important gene—which we renamed  bee antiviral protein-1  ( bap1 ). Phylogenetic analysis revealed that  bap1  is taxonomically restricted to Hymenoptera and  Blatella germanica  (the German cockroach) and that the majority of  bap1  amino acids are evolving under neutral selection. This is in-line with the results from structural prediction tools that indicate Bap1 is a highly disordered protein, which likely has relaxed structural constraints. Assessment of honey bee gene expression using a weighted gene correlation network analysis revealed that  bap1  expression was highly correlated with several immune genes—most notably  argonaute-2 . The coexpression of  bap1  and  argonaute-2  was confirmed in an independent dataset that accounted for the effect of virus abundance. Together, these data demonstrate that  bap1  is a taxonomically restricted, rapidly evolving antiviral immune gene. Future work will determine the role of  bap1  in limiting replication of other viruses and examine the signal cascade responsible for regulating the expression of  bap1  and other honey bee antiviral defense genes, including coexpressed  ago-2 , and determine whether the virus limiting function of  bap1  acts in parallel or in tandem with RNAi.

The Honey Bee Gene Bee Antiviral Protein-1 Is a Taxonomically Restricted Antiviral Immune Gene