ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2020
Intergenerational transfer of DNA methylation marks in the honey bee.
Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 29 papers.
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Who cites it
29 citing papers in PubMed, 67 citations in OpenAlex.
- Sex-biased DNA methylation in small hive beetles (Aethina tumida).Insect molecular biology · 2026Article
- Gene body methylation suppresses intragenic transcription and permits epigenetic inheritance in a cnidarian.Nature ecology & evolution · 2026Article
- Integration of epigenetics into ecotoxicology: insights and fundamental research needs.Biological reviews of the Cambridge Philosophical Society · 2026Review
- Multiomics Reveal Associations Between CpG Methylation, Histone Modifications and Transcription in a Species That has Lost DNMT3, the Colorado Potato Beetle.Journal of experimental zoology. Part B, Molecular and developmental evolution · 2025Article
- Reply to Maleszka et al.: DNA methylation signals persist across insect metamorphosis.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025Article
- Epigenetic Mechanisms inCurrent issues in molecular biology · 2025Review
- Transgenerational epigenetic effect of kings' aging on offspring's caste fate mediated by sperm DNA methylation in termites.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025Article
- DNA Methylation of Somatic Tissues in Oysters is Influenced by Sex and Heredity.Marine biotechnology (New York, N.Y.) · 2025Article
- Gene body methylation evolves during the sustained loss of parental care in the burying beetle.Nature communications · 2024Article
- An epigenetic toolbox for conservation biologists.Evolutionary applications · 2024Article
- DNA Methylation Machinery in Gastropod Mollusks.Life (Basel, Switzerland) · 2024Review
- Examining parent-of-origin effects on transcription and RNA methylation in mediating aggressive behavior in honey bees (Apis mellifera).BMC genomics · 2023Article
- Article
- H3K4me1 Modification Functions in Caste Differentiation in Honey Bees.International journal of molecular sciences · 2023Article
- Intergenerational impact of dietary protein restriction in dairy ewes on epigenetic marks in the perirenal fat of their suckling lambs.Scientific reports · 2023Article
- Epigenetics Mechanisms of Honeybees: Secrets of Royal Jelly.Epigenetics insights · 2023Review
- ChIP-seq profiling of H3K4me3 and H3K27me3 in an invasive insect,Frontiers in genetics · 2023Article
- Epigenetics and reproductive isolation: a commentary on Westram et al., 2022.Journal of evolutionary biology · 2022Article
- Environmentally induced DNA methylation is inherited across generations in an aquatic keystone species.iScience · 2022Article
- Studying phenotypic variation and DNA methylation across development, ecology and evolution in the clonal marbled crayfish: a paradigm for investigating epigenotype-phenotype relationships in macro-invertebrates.Die Naturwissenschaften · 2022Review
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Authors and funding
4 authors at 1 institution in 2 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
The evolutionary significance of epigenetic inheritance is controversial. While epigenetic marks such as DNA methylation can affect gene function and change in response to environmental conditions, their role as carriers of heritable information is often considered anecdotal. Indeed, near-complete DNA methylation reprogramming, as occurs during mammalian embryogenesis, is a major hindrance for the transmission of nongenetic information between generations. Yet it remains unclear how general DNA methylation reprogramming is across the tree of life. Here we investigate the existence of epigenetic inheritance in the honey bee. We studied whether fathers can transfer epigenetic information to their daughters through DNA methylation. We performed instrumental inseminations of queens, each with four different males, retaining half of each male's semen for whole genome bisulfite sequencing. We then compared the methylation profile of each father's somatic tissue and semen with the methylation profile of his daughters. We found that DNA methylation patterns were highly conserved between tissues and generations. There was a much greater similarity of methylomes within patrilines (i.e., father-daughter subfamilies) than between patrilines in each colony. Indeed, the samples' methylomes consistently clustered by patriline within colony. Samples from the same patriline had twice as many shared methylated sites and four times fewer differentially methylated regions compared to samples from different patrilines. Our findings indicate that there is no DNA methylation reprogramming in bees and, consequently, that DNA methylation marks are stably transferred between generations. This points to a greater evolutionary potential of the epigenome in invertebrates than there is in mammals.
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