Molecular cloning and characterization of venom peptides from two Honeybee species (Apis cerana and Apis mellifera)

Abstract

Two honey bee species (Apis cerana and Apis mellifera) are domesticated for the economic products like honey, royal jelly and venom. Three components of honey bee venom peptide viz., melittin, phospholipase A2 (PLA2), and secapin have proven effects in pharmaceutical and clinical applications and these components were cloned and characterized in the present study. Bee venom glands were dissected out for RNA isolation and cDNA was synthesized from the total RNA. PCR was carried out using gene-specific primers for melittin, PLA2, and secapin genes, using cDNA as template. PCR products were cloned in the TA-cloning vector and sequenced. Amino acid sequences were deduced from nucleic acid sequences and a phylogenetic tree was constructed to deduce the evolutionary relationship among the honey bee species. Crude bee venom was collected by electric milking method and dissolved in sterile water to separate the venom peptides by SDS-PAGE. Crude bee venom was tested against the rice pathogenic bacterium Xanthomonas oryzae pv. oryzae which causes bacterial blight disease of rice. Agar diffusion assay of bee venom was performed to confirm the antimicrobial properties of crude venom. Both A. cerana and A. mellifera venom showed antibacterial activity against X. oryzae pv. oryzae.

DOI

https://doi.org/10.29321/MAJ.2019.000287

Pages

143 - 148

Creative Commons

Copyright

© The Author(s), 2026. Published by Madras Agricultural Students' Union in Madras Agricultural Journal (MAJ). This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited by the user.

Keywords