ABOVE: Minor (left) and major (right) C. floridanus workers
RILEY GRAHAM, BERGER LAB
Florida carpenter ants (Camponotus floridanus) develop specialized jobs early in adulthood. “Major” worker ants are large soldier ants that help protect the colony, while “minor” worker ants are smaller and forage for food. Researchers have identified an epigenetic pathway that can be altered to make majors show foraging behaviors like minor ants, according to a paper published in Molecular Cell yesterday (November 12).
A team led by Shelley Berger, an epigeneticist at the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine, injected the brains of major ants with the chemical trichostatin A at either 0, 5, or 10 days after the insects reached adulthood. This caused hundreds of genes to be differentially expressed. One important upregulated gene was RCOR1, which codes for a protein called CoREST that was found to be responsible for the altered ant behavior. It prevents ...
