China is the largest royal jelly producer and exporter in the world, and high royal jelly-yielding strains have been bred in the country for approximately three decades. However, information on the molecular mechanism underlying high royal jelly production is scarce. Here, a cDNA microarray was used to screen and identify differentially expressed genes (DEGs) to obtain an overview on the change...

The egg of Rana clamitans enrobed in its native jelly was not fertilized by sperm of R. pipiens. However, when R. clamitans eggs were enrobed by R. pipiens jelly, they were fertilized by R. pipiens sperm. Male pronuclei were found in the eggs, and most of the resulting embryos were diploid. The embryos gastrulated, but most arrested at midto late gastrula stages. Some begun neurulation, but non...

In the eusocial honey bee Apis mellifera, with reproductive queens and sterile workers, a female larva's developmental fate depends on its diet; nurse bees feed queen-destined larvae exclusively royal jelly, a glandular secretion, but worker-destined larvae receive royal jelly for 3 days and subsequently jelly to which honey and beebread are added. RNA-Seq analysis demonstrated that p-coumaric ...

Social caste determination in the honey bee is assumed to be determined by the dietary status of the young larvae and translated into physiological and epigenetic changes through nutrient-sensing pathways. We have employed Illumina/Solexa sequencing to examine the small RNA content in the bee larval food, and show that worker jelly is enriched in miRNA complexity and abundance relative to royal...

Proteoglycans of Wharton's jelly contain mainly chondroitin/dermatan sulphate chains. The predominant proteoglycan is decorin (core proteins of 45 and 47 kDa), although the core proteins of biglycan (45 kDa), versican (260 kDa) and of other proteoglycans (90, 110, 220 kDa) were also detected (Gogiel et al., 2003). The aim of the present study was to compare the proteoglycan composition of Whart...

Cisplatin (CP) is one of the most active cytotoxic agents in the treatment of cancer and has adverse side effects such as hepatotoxicity and nephrotoxicity. The aim of this study was focused on investigating the possible protective effect of royal jelly (RJ) against oxidative stress caused by CP injury of the liver and inflammatory changes in male albino rats. Twenty four albino rats were divid...

Maternal investment for offspring's growth and survival is widespread among diverse organisms. Vertical symbiont transmission via maternal passage is also pivotal for offspring's growth and survival in many organisms. Hence, it is expected that vertical symbiont transmission may coevolve with various organismal traits concerning maternal investment in offspring. Here we report a novel phenotypi...

Honeybee royal jelly is reported to have body-enlarging effects in holometabolous insects such as the honeybee, fly and silkmoth, but its effect in non-holometabolous insect species has not yet been examined. The present study confirmed the body-enlarging effect in silkmoths fed an artificial diet instead of mulberry leaves used in the previous literature. Administration of honeybee royal jelly...

In 1678, Stefano Lorenzini first described a network of organs of unknown function in the torpedo ray-the ampullae of Lorenzini (AoL). An individual ampulla consists of a pore on the skin that is open to the environment, a canal containing a jelly and leading to an alveolus with a series of electrosensing cells. The role of the AoL remained a mystery for almost 300 years until research demonstr...