title: Expression of abdominal-A homeotic gene in ants with different abdominal morphologies.
abstract: In most insect groups, the Hox gene abdominal-A specifies the development of consecutive monotonous anterior abdominal segments. In contrast, the ant family shows pronounced differentiation of the anterior abdominal segments: the first is fused to the thoracic segments, the second, the petiole, is a specialised segment in all ants and the third, the post-petiole, can either take the appearance of a gastric segment (as in the Dolichoderinae) or of a petiole-like segment, (as in the Myrmicinae). Changes in the regulation of the abdominal-A gene are suspected to be instrumental in this morphological differentiation. Previous work has shown that the genomic coding sequences of the abdominal-A gene is nearly identical between all ant subfamilies. Therefore any evolutionary change within the ant family in the developmental activity of abdominal-A is most likely due to a change in gene expression than to a change in the activity of the Abdominal-A protein. Here I present the embryonic expression of the abdominal-A gene in two ant species with different abdominal morphologies. I find that by the late-germ band stage, abdominal-A transcripts are detected in a similar pattern in both species whereas the early patterning of abdominal-A is distinctly different between the two species.
authors.affiliation: Centre de Génétique Moléculaire, CNRS UPR 2167, 91198 Gif-sur-Yvette Cedex, France. helene.niculita@unil.ch
authors.forename: Hélène
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Niculita
mesh_terms: D000005:Abdomen / Q000033:anatomy & histology / Q000196:embryology; D000595:Amino Acid Sequence; D000818:Animals; D001000:Ants / Q000033:anatomy & histology / Q000196:embryology* / Q000235:genetics*; D019521:Body Patterning / Q000235:genetics; D018507:Gene Expression Regulation, Developmental; D005801:Genes, Homeobox; D017344:Genes, Insect; D018398:Homeodomain Proteins / Q000235:genetics*; D019476:Insect Proteins / Q000235:genetics*; D008969:Molecular Sequence Data; D017386:Sequence Homology, Amino Acid; D013045:Species Specificity
chemical_list: C410542:Abd-A protein, insect; D018398:Homeodomain Proteins; D019476:Insect Proteins