Bees reveal nature-nurture secrets

The nature-nurture debate is a 'giant step' closer to being resolved after scientists studying bees documented how environmental inputs can modify our genetic hardware. The research team was led by Professor Ryszard Maleszka of The Australian National University's College of Medicine, Biology and Environment, working with colleagues from the German Cancer Institute in Heidelberg, Germany. Their work has uncovered the extensive molecular differences that occur in the brains of two types of genetically identical, but behaviourally different, female honey bees - worker bees and queen bees. The workers and queens develop along very different paths when put on different diets. Their work reveals for the first time the intricacies of the environmentally-influenced chemical 'marking of DNA' called DNA methylation, which has the capacity to alter gene expression without affecting the genetic code - a process referred to as 'epigenetic', or above the genome. ?This marking determines which genes are to be fine-tuned in the brains of workers and queens to produce their extraordinarily different behaviours. This finding is not only crucial, but far reaching, because the enzymes that mark DNA in the bee are also the enzymes that mark DNA in human brains,? said Professor Maleszka.