Honeybees can be used to determine to understand the basic connection between taste perception&metabolic disorder in humans,according to scientists at Arizona University.By experimenting with honey bee genetics,researchers have identified connection between sugar sensibility, diabetic physiology & carbohydrate metabolism. Bees &humans may partially share these connections.
Gro AMDAM an Associate Professor,and Ying Wang, a research Scientist,in the school of life sciences in ASU College of Liberal arts and sciences,explained how for the first time,they have successfully inactivated two genes in the bees master regulator,module that controls food-related behaviors,researchers discovered a possible molecular link between sweet taste perception and the state of internal energy.
A bees sensitivity to sugar reveals her attitude towards food,how old is the bee when she started searching the nectar e and pollen ,and which kind of food she prefers to collect,said Wang,the lead author of the paper.
By suppressing these two master genes they discovered that bees can become more sensitive to sweat taste but interestingly those bees also have very high blood sugar levels,and low level of insulin,much like peoples who have Type 1 diabetes.
An Am-dam"S honey bee lab at ASU,Scientist,suppressed two genes including vitellogen,which similar to human gene called apolipoprotien B ,and ultras piracle,which partners with an insect hormone that has some functions in common with human thyroid hormone. The team is the first in the world to accomplish this double gene suppressing technique.Researchers used this method to understand how the master regulator works.
Now ,if one can use the bees to understand how taste preceotion and metabolic syndromes are connected,it is very useful tool ,said Amdam who has a honey labor try,at the Norwegian University of life sciences.
Most of what we know about deficits in human perception is from peoples who are very sick or have a brain trams,we know shockingly little about in this area,he added.
The researches are now considering how exactly,the bees sweet taste was enhanced by the experiment.,The most metabolically active tissue of the bee,called the fat body,may hold the key.The fat body is similar to to the liver and abdominal fat in humans,in that it helps more nutrients and create energy.
Andam explained that taste perception evolved as survival mechanism,for bees as well as for people.For example bitter foods may be poisonous or sweet taste may signal foods rich in calories for energy.For all animals taste perception must communicate properly with one"s internal energetic state to control food intake and maintain normal life function,without this poorly functioning taste perception contribute to unhealthy eating behavior and metabolic disease such as diabetes and obesity''from this study they realized we can take advantage of honey bees in understanding how food related behaviors interact with internal metabolism,as well as how to manipulate these food related behaviors in order to control metabolic disorders,said Amdam.
The study was published in the open access journal PLoS Genetics(Public library of Science) ANI
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