Proteomic Characterization of Royal Jelly Proteins in Chinese (Apis cerana cerana) and European (Apis mellifera) Honeybees

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Ning Qu^1#, Jie Jiang^2#, Liangxian Sun³, Changcheng Lai¹, Lifang Sun¹, and Xueji Wu^1*

¹School of Life Sciences, Xiamen University, Daxue Road 168, Xiamen 361005, China; fax: +86-592-218-4992; E-mail: xuejiwu@yahoo.com

²Xiamen Hospital of Traditional Chinese Medicine, Xiamen 361009, China

³Model Organism Research Center, Quanzhou Normal University, Quanzhou 362000, China

^* To whom correspondence should be addressed.

Received November 19, 2007; Revision received December 27, 2007

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^# These authors contributed equally to this work.

In this study, the proteins contained in royal jelly (RJ) derived from Chinese and European honeybees have been analyzed in detail and compared. Remarkable differences were found in the heterogeneity of major royal jelly proteins (MRJPs), MRJP2 and MRJP3, in terms of molecular weight and isoelectric points between the two species of RJ. MRJP2 and MRJP3 produced by Chinese honeybee are less polymorphic than those produced by European honeybee. This study is a contribution to the description of the royal jelly proteome.

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KEY WORDS: Apis cerana, Apis mellifera, royal jelly, major royal jelly proteins, two-dimensional gel electrophoresis

DOI: 10.1134/S0006297908060072

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