Molecular Cloning and Sequence Analysis of Two Peptides from Honeybee (Apis mellifera spp) Venom

Abstract

Honeybee is a major pollinator for agricultural crops and wild flower plants that supply food for human. Apis mellifera ssp is one of the most important honeybee species not only in Northeast China, but also in the world, and is one of subspecies of Italic honeybees with a stronger foraging and higher stress-resistance capability compared to other honeybee species. Two genes, melittin and secapin, from the venom of A. mellifera ssp were cloned and identified by RT-PCR for the first time. Compared of these two peptides amino acid sequence with those of the western and eastern honeybee revealed that they had highly similarities in the compositions of amino acid. The phylogenetic treesrnshow that the two genes were more closely related to the westerner honeybee than the eastern honeybee. These results indicate that the amino acid sequences of melittin and secapin are different from those reported from A. mellifera ligustica, although they all belong to the same family. Furthermore, those results support the evidence to preserve and explore resources from A. mellifera ssp.