1. Exploring the non-coding regions in the mtDNA of some honey bee species and subspecies
- Author
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Hossam F. Abou-Shaara, Zakia A. Jamal, Sanaullah Khan, Mashael Alhumaidi Alotaibi, Osama B. Mohammed, Naveed Khan, Khalid Ali Khan, Mohamed Nasser, El-Kazafy A. Taha, Samina Qamer, Syed Ishtiaq Anjum, Afshan Syed Abbas, Ahmed Hossam Mahmoud, Bilal Ahmad, and Saad N. Al-Kahtani
- Subjects
0106 biological sciences ,0301 basic medicine ,Mitochondrial DNA ,Sequence analysis ,Subspecies ,01 natural sciences ,Sequences ,03 medical and health sciences ,Phylogenetics ,lcsh:QH301-705.5 ,Apis cerana ,Phylogeny ,Apis florea ,biology ,Phylogenetic tree ,fungi ,Honey bee ,biology.organism_classification ,030104 developmental biology ,Genes ,lcsh:Biology (General) ,Evolutionary biology ,behavior and behavior mechanisms ,Original Article ,General Agricultural and Biological Sciences ,Analysis ,010606 plant biology & botany - Abstract
The sequence of the DNA contains coding and non-coding regions. The role of the non-coding regions is not known and is hypothesized to maintain the structure of the DNA. This study aimed to investigate the structure of the non-coding sequences in honey bees utilizing bioinformatics. The non-coding sequences of the mtDNA of three honey bee species Apis dorosata, Apis florea, Apis cerana, and ten subspecies of Apis mellifera were investigated. Different techniques were utilized to explore the non-coding regions of these bees including sequence analysis, phylogenetic relationships, enzymatic digestion, and statistical tests. Variations in size and sequences of nucleotides were detected in the studied species and subspecies, but with the same nucleotide abundance (i.e. nucleotides A were more than T and nucleotides G were less than C). The phylogenetic tree based on the non-coding regions was partially similar to the known phylogenetic relationships between these bees. The enzymatic digestion using four restriction enzymes confirmed the results of the phylogenetic relationships. The statistical analysis based on numerical codes for nucleotides showed the absence of significant variations between the studied bees in their sequences in a similar way to results of neutrality tests. This study suggests that the non-coding regions have the same functional role in all the studied bees regardless of the number of nucleotides, and not just to maintain the structure of the DNA. This is approximately the first study to shade lights on the non-coding regions of the mtDNA of honey bees.
- Published
- 2021