TY - JOUR
T1 - A molecular toolkit for superorganisms
AU - Sieriebriennikov, Bogdan
AU - Reinberg, Danny
AU - Desplan, Claude
N1 - Funding Information:
We would like to thank Nikolaos Konstantinides, Yingguang Frank Chan, Hua Yan, Comzit Opachaloemphan, Long Ding, and Francisco Carmona Aldana for their comments on the manuscript, and Amanda Araujo Gomes Ferreira for the feedback on the figures. This work was supported by the grant 1R01AG058762-01 from the National Institutes of Health to D.R. and C.D. B.S. was supported by the Long-Term Fellowship LT000010/2020-L from the Human Frontier Science Program. No interests are declared.
Funding Information:
We would like to thank Nikolaos Konstantinides, Yingguang Frank Chan, Hua Yan, Comzit Opachaloemphan, Long Ding, and Francisco Carmona Aldana for their comments on the manuscript, and Amanda Araujo Gomes Ferreira for the feedback on the figures. This work was supported by the grant 1R01AG058762-01 from the National Institutes of Health to D.R. and C.D. B.S. was supported by the Long-Term Fellowship LT000010/2020-L from the Human Frontier Science Program .
Publisher Copyright:
© 2021 Elsevier Ltd
PY - 2021/9
Y1 - 2021/9
N2 - Social insects, such as ants, bees, wasps, and termites, draw biologists’ attention due to their distinctive lifestyles. As experimental systems, they provide unique opportunities to study organismal differentiation, division of labor, longevity, and the evolution of development. Ants are particularly attractive because several ant species can be propagated in the laboratory. However, the same lifestyle that makes social insects interesting also hampers the use of molecular genetic techniques. Here, we summarize the efforts of the ant research community to surmount these hurdles and obtain novel mechanistic insight into the biology of social insects. We review current approaches and propose novel ones involving genomics, transcriptomics, chromatin and DNA methylation profiling, RNA interference (RNAi), and genome editing in ants and discuss future experimental strategies.
AB - Social insects, such as ants, bees, wasps, and termites, draw biologists’ attention due to their distinctive lifestyles. As experimental systems, they provide unique opportunities to study organismal differentiation, division of labor, longevity, and the evolution of development. Ants are particularly attractive because several ant species can be propagated in the laboratory. However, the same lifestyle that makes social insects interesting also hampers the use of molecular genetic techniques. Here, we summarize the efforts of the ant research community to surmount these hurdles and obtain novel mechanistic insight into the biology of social insects. We review current approaches and propose novel ones involving genomics, transcriptomics, chromatin and DNA methylation profiling, RNA interference (RNAi), and genome editing in ants and discuss future experimental strategies.
KW - CRISPR
KW - RNAi
KW - ants
KW - epigenetics
KW - single-cell sequencing
KW - transgenesis
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85108536749&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=85108536749&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1016/j.tig.2021.05.005
DO - 10.1016/j.tig.2021.05.005
M3 - Review article
C2 - 34116864
AN - SCOPUS:85108536749
SN - 0168-9525
VL - 37
SP - 846
EP - 859
JO - Trends in Genetics
JF - Trends in Genetics
IS - 9
ER -