Royal jelly active ingredient found: 'royalactin'

[river-wind]

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn20414-bees-royal-jelly-secret-revealed.html

'This suggests a pre-existing mechanism was repurposed to produce the bee caste system, says Francis Ratnieks of the University of Sussex in Brighton, UK. When insects first formed eusocial colonies, queens and workers must have been physically identical, he says, and the distinct castes came later, created by royalactin or something like it.'

 

[Hercules Rockefeller]

This has been a really interesting finding. :thumbsup: It also highlights the deficiencies in science reporting that can occur.

The New Scientist article mentioned above says:

Kamakura found that royalactin works by switching on the gene that codes for Egfr, a protein found throughout the animal kingdom.

Bees' royal jelly secret revealed
New Scientist
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn20414-bees-royal-jelly-secret-revealed.html

Wow, that’s pretty amazing, I initially thought. Somehow royalactin acts, either directly or indirectly, as a transcription factor that can actually ‘turn on’ a gene.

But on second thoughts that seemed far fetched to me, so I searched some more and found this:

Meanwhile, mutant flies hinted that royalactin was recognized by a protein called EGFR, which senses hormones called epidermal growth factors. Flies lacking EGFR or some of the proteins it communicates with got none of the growth or fertility benefits of royal jelly or royalactin, Kamakura found. Reducing the levels of the growth factor-sensing protein in honey bee larvae, meanwhile, prevented royal jelly-fed larvae from becoming queens.

The ingredient that makes royal jelly so royal
Nature blogs
http://blogs.nature.com/news/thegreatbeyond/2011/04/honey_bees.html?WT.ec_id=NEWS-20110426

Ahhh, now this seems much more likely. Royalactin acts through Egfr to stimulate the Egf pathway, a key developmental pathway known to regulate cell proliferation and differentiation.

To verify this I went to the original source and looked at the Nature publication. It says:

These findings indicate that a specific factor in royal jelly, royalactin, drives queen development through an Egfr-mediated signalling pathway.

Royalactin induces queen differentiation in honeybees
Masaki Kamakura
Nature, doi:10.1038/nature10093
Received 02 June 2010 Accepted 05 April 2011 Published online 24 April 2011

So, case closed. Royalactin exerts its effects by signalling through the Egf receptor, NOT by upregulating expression of the receptor.

Pretty shoddy science reporting by New Scientist, if you ask me. Some may accuse me of being pedantic, but science is all about being pedantic. It’s all about detail and specifics. The above scenarios are two very different events and are not the same thing.

 

[Crunchy Cat]

You rock HR. Good research.

 

[phlogistician]

Some may accuse me of being pedantic, but science is all about being pedantic. It’s all about detail and specifics. The above scenarios are two very different events and are not the same thing.

Well yeah, saying that EGFR is "a protein found throughout the animal kingdom" might make people think that Royal Jelly could affect all life,... that's a bit of a sweeping statement. So pedantry, and keeping the story straight is definitely required.

 

[Hercules Rockefeller]

Agreed, it might make people erroneously think that. But it’s easy to see why references to the evolutionarily conserved EGF pathway were mentioned – it helps explain why/how the legwork was done in Drosophila.