Figures
Gut decisions.
Honey bees make food choices when visiting flowering plants. Some bees prefer carbohydrate-rich nectar; others choose pollen high in protein. Similar food decisions are partly responsible for metabolic disorders in humans, such as diabetes and obesity. In this issue of PLoS Genetics, Wang et al. show that food-choice behavior in bees is regulated by abdominal fat cells through the gene IRS (Insulin Receptor Substrate), a conserved gene central to animal metabolic biology. While IRS activity in the brain was previously implicated in animal appetitive behavior, these results show IRS can act in non-neural tissues to modify food choice.
Image Credit: Adam J. Siegel (School of Life Sciences, Arizona State University, USA)
Citation: (2010) PLoS Genetics Issue Image | Vol. 6(4) April 2010. PLoS Genet 6(4): ev06.i04. https://doi.org/10.1371/image.pgen.v06.i04
Published: April 29, 2010
Copyright: © 2010 Adam J. Siegel. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Honey bees make food choices when visiting flowering plants. Some bees prefer carbohydrate-rich nectar; others choose pollen high in protein. Similar food decisions are partly responsible for metabolic disorders in humans, such as diabetes and obesity. In this issue of PLoS Genetics, Wang et al. show that food-choice behavior in bees is regulated by abdominal fat cells through the gene IRS (Insulin Receptor Substrate), a conserved gene central to animal metabolic biology. While IRS activity in the brain was previously implicated in animal appetitive behavior, these results show IRS can act in non-neural tissues to modify food choice.
Image Credit: Adam J. Siegel (School of Life Sciences, Arizona State University, USA)