Soldier ants were turned into foragers by scientists who reprogrammed their brains [videos]

Scientists have discovered an enzyme within the ants’ “blood-brain barrier” that ultimately determines… Whether the ant will be a soldier or a forager.

A new study reveals that a complex system in ant society may be controlled in part by the insect’s version of the blood-brain barrier, a gatekeeper that allows only certain substances into the brain.

As you write Sneha Khedkar In Live Science

An anthill is a finely organized community of insects, with a clear division of labor to ensure smooth functioning. While the queen lays eggs, the worker ants are either foraging for food or protecting the nest as soldiers, and the ants’ hormones, including one called “juvenile hormone,” dictate the role each ant plays.

However, the underlying molecular controls that regulate these hormones to shape social behavior are not well understood.

Now, a recent study has shown that the blood-brain barrier (BBB), the filter that protects the brain from unnecessary or potentially harmful substances, plays a role in this process.

The results, published September 7 in the journal Cell, show that the BBB “filter” regulates the levels of hormones entering the brain, thus influencing the roles of worker ants in the colony.

In this study, the researchers wanted to understand the basis of behavioral differences between forager and soldier ants.

They investigated which genes and proteins were differentially expressed between these two orders in Florida, US, “carpenter” ants (Camponotus floridanus). They discovered that the enzyme that breaks down the youth hormone, called juvenile hormone, was only present in the cells that form the ants’ BBBs.

Their analysis revealed that soldier ants had higher levels of juvenile esterase than foraging ants, and as a result, less of the hormone reached the “soldier’s” brains.

When researchers injected juvenile hormone directly into the brains of soldier ants, bypassing the blood-brain barrier, the ants abandoned their role as mercenaries and began searching for food.

Ants showed a similar change in social behavior when researchers reduced their supply of the youth hormone by manipulating the gene that produces it. With no enzyme to break it down, the juvenile hormone reached the ants’ brains and reprogrammed their behavior.

Previous studies have reported that the BBB can regulate hormone levels in the insect brain, the study’s co-first author told Live Science in an email. Karl Glastadresearcher at the University of Pennsylvania.

“However, the fact that the ants’ blood-brain barrier dynamically regulates juvenile hormone regulation between these two types of workers in a way that controls such important behavior was certainly surprising to us,” he said.

“That JH access to the brain is tightly regulated at the level of the blood-brain barrier is a very nice discovery,” he told Live. Daniel Cronauer, an evolutionary biologist at Rockefeller University who was not involved in the study. Science in email.

To see whether the enzyme would affect a less socially sophisticated insect, the research team conducted experiments on fruit flies (Drosophila melanogaster). Activation of the juvenile hormone esterase gene in the BBB fly resulted in behavioral changes similar to those seen in ants: the transgenic flies spent less time foraging than their unmodified counterparts.

Understanding the factors that control the amount of youth hormone that ends up at the blood barrier in ants requires more work, Glastad said.

But these results highlight an underappreciated role of the BBB in insects. He said that it is more than a passive screen, it is an active component in a complete behavioral circuit.

To investigate whether other animals use similar mechanisms to control hormones entering the brain, the researchers analyzed published data from other laboratories.

They found that some hormone-degrading enzymes are also present in BBB cells in mice. (Similar enzymes have not been found in the human BBB, but the structure controls hormones in other ways.)

“It would be very surprising to me if there were no other similar, independently evolved mechanisms in other organisms,” Glastad said.

Although Cronauer said he was cautious about extending the findings from insects to mammals, he acknowledged the possibility that the BBB in mammals has similar systems that regulate hormone levels in the brain by breaking down molecules.

“But this will require more experimental work to understand,” he said.

Source: Live Science

Point Nemo, a space station graveyard in the ‘nowhere’ of the Pacific Ocean: between New Zealand and Chile – the ‘El Dorado’ of future archaeologists [videos]

Follow Hellas Journal on Google News