Meeting Abstract
A highly conserved system of cellular stress responses is involved in maintaining proteostasis, the homeostasis of protein synthesis, folding, function, and degradation, in the face of diverse environmental insults. One branch of this network is mediated by the Heat Shock Response (HSR), which we characterized previously in adult honey bees. In other species characterized to date, aging, both as a function of time and reproductive potential, results in proteome breakdown and a decreasing ability to mount responses by the HSR. By contrast, we found that newly eclosed honey bees have an immature heat shock response compared to older adult bees. The honey bee HSR increases in induction magnitude during transition to nurse and forager stages. This finding represents a first report of a species for which the HSR increases in potential with age. Future work aims at understanding the molecular mechanisms involved in upregulation of HSR capacity with age and placing these findings in the context of the needs of the honey bee colony.
