BIOINFORMATICAL ANALYSIS OF GENE EXPRESSION OF THE ANTIOXIDANT SYSTEM OF AFRICANIZED Apis mellifera BEES IN THE FIELD STAGE EXPOSED TO PESTICIDES

• Grant number: 23/00572-6
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Master
• Start date: September 01, 2023
• End date: June 30, 2024
• Field of knowledge: Agronomical Sciences - Animal Husbandry - Animal Production
• Principal Investigator: Ricardo de Oliveira Orsi
• Grantee: Iloran do Rosário Corrêa Moreira
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Medicina Veterinária e Zootecnia (FMVZ). Universidade Estadual Paulista (UNESP). Campus de Botucatu. Botucatu , SP, Brazil

Abstract

The indiscriminate use of pesticides has been negatively affecting bees and their pollination services. Therefore, it is necessary to carry out studies on the pesticides widely used in Brazil, in order to evaluate possible damages caused to Africanized Apis mellifera honeybee. The present work aims to evaluate the toxicity of three different classes of pesticides in changing the genes expression profile of the antioxidant system resulting from exposure by ingestion and contact, in honeybees in the forager stage. The selected and marked field bees will be fed with honey syrup containing the LD50 and LD50/100 of the pesticides, previously established, remaining at controlled temperature and humidity after ingestion. Subsequently, the marked bees will be collected and kept in an ultra freezer (-80°C) up to the time of transcriptome analyses. Total RNA from bee brain tissue will be extracted by the Trizol method. After preparing the library, the samples will be sequenced on an Illumina platform. Calculations of gene expression measures to from the mRNA sequences and the generation of gene expression profiles will be performed on the CLC Genomics Workbench 7.01 platform (CLC Bio, Denmark). Differences between treatments will be compared by ANOVA, followed by Bonferroni and Fisher, with false discovery rate correction for genetic ontology (GO) analyses. The results of this study should provide a better understanding of the molecular mechanisms involved in honeybee responses to stress caused by exposure to pesticides and thus contribute to the conservation of honeybee biodiversity.