Reprogrammed Ants

Florida carpenter ants have specialized jobs where they either "major" which are soldier or "minor" which forage for food. Shelby Berger injected the "major" ants with trichostatin A from 0,5, or 10 days after adulthood. This was injected in the brain and caused numerous of their genes to be expressed differently. Some had changes in behavior, but the ants that were injected at 10 days did not; suggesting that behavior flexibility has a very short time frame. This can cause soldier ants to behave as the foragers.

I think this is a very interesting study. I wonder if this can be done with ants, what other species this can affect as well. The test seemed to mainly turn the soldier ants into foragers, but I wonder if it could work the other way as well. I believe it would because it seems to alter their genetics, so it should be the same.



https://www.the-scientist.com/image-of-the-day/image-of-the-day--reprogrammed-ants-66709

Related Article:
https://penntoday.upenn.edu/news/reprogramming-carpenter-ants-epigenetics

True Life: Honey I Shrunk the Kids

Or... the ants.

If carpenter ants weren't big enough, be prepared. Research performed at McGill University in Canada revealed that the Egfr gene (epidermal growth factor receptor) can affect surrounded genes into altering the sizes of the ants.

Naturally, the size of ants depends on their role in the colony. Obviously, the Queen is the largest. Differences in nutrition and chemicals determine what role an ant will have, and thus determines size. The chemicals directly affect different parts of genomes. Carpenter ants collected from Tallahassee, Florida were collected and brought back to the lab in Canada. Researchers at the University used a mechanism called "DNA methylation", which means that methyl groups (molecules) were added to certain DNA sequence sections. The ant larvae were exposed to drugs that increased or decreased the level of DNA methylation of the Egfr gene. The higher the methylation, the larger the ant size. The gene is indirectly regulated by DNA methylation, which can change the transcription of a gene completely, and thus change the size of an organism. Surrounding genes involved in cellular growth can also be altered due to the Egfr gene.

Researchers involved with this study hope that using these techniques, they can one day change how much a gene is expressed to even limit the growth of cancer and other disease cells.

While ants creep me out, I think this is fantastic news in epigenetics. In a lab setting, sizes of already living beings have been changed based on a physical process. They are larvae, already alive, being exposed to something that can alter their next phase of life. My only speculation with a tool like this is if it is used improperly. I would love to make a breakthrough in conquering cancers and other diseases by reducing their growth and possibly stopping growth altogether. However, I feel if we alter the sizes of animals, it can harm the environment if not controlled properly. Plenty of species have been introduced into unnatural habitats intentionally or unintentionally thanks to humans. Ants twice the size of what they are normally can ravage and destroy local colonies and thus upset the natural balance.  It's a battle the world is all too familiar with, but it is absolutely a possibility.

Original Article: Epigenetic variation in the ​Egfr gene generates quantitative variation in a complex trait in ants