Mecanismo molecular da determinação de sexo e casta em Melipona compressipes (Hymenoptera: Apidae)

Abstract

The presence of castes among females and a sytem of seasonal production of males in order to fund new daughter colonies or replace the Queen, is essencial to life in society for the high eusocial bees. The haplodiploidy has unique consequences to the populational ecology and social oveolutinos for the social bees. Studies have shown, in depleted popultions, that consecutive mating between indviduals with equal allele composition for the sex determination gene can cause its extinction. The sex determination genes csd (complementary sex determiner) and fem (feminizer) seems to be at the top of a regulatory cascade in which will originate the different phenotypes, which is indeed a essential way to mainten the eusociability in bees. The sex determination system as well as the several distincts caste determination systems existing among the high eusocial bess are yet poorly undertood in their genetic basis and seems to be fairly complex as diverse. The goal of this thesis was to sequence genes envolved in the sex or caste determination in the Melipona bees. Using the RACE (Rapid Amplification of cDNA Ends) technique, the gene fem (feminizer) was cloned and sequenced in M. compressipes and analysed with help of bioinformatcis tools. The analysis show in Melipona compressipes that the predict gene product have 64% of identity and 75% of similarity with its equivalent (Fem) in Apis mellifera, posesing the same protein domains: Arginime-Serine domain (RS-domain) and proline domain (proline rich dormain). The gene fem in M. compressipes as in Apis, do not have hyper variable region which characterizes its paralog gene csd Thus, as this work proposes would indicate that the fem product would have function in the activation of genes in Melipona switching on other secondary feminizer genes in contrast with the masculining genes, which are constitutive.We propose a model that that put together literature information with the new gene fem findings in Melipona, aiming a discussion about the relulatory cascade which surpass from the sex determination