Immediate early gene kakusei plays a role in the daily foraging and learning of honey bees

kakusei is a non-coding RNA that is overexpressed in foraging bee brain. This study describes a fundamental role of the IEG kakusei during the daily foraging of honey bees. kakusei was found to be transiently upregulated within two hours during rewarded foraging. Interestingly, during unrewarded foraging the gene was also found to be up-regulated, but immediately lowered as food was not rewarded. Moreover, the kakusei overexpression was diminished within a very short time when the time schedule of feeding was changed. This indicates the potential role of kakusei on the motivation of learned reward foraging, reflecting associative learning memory. These results provide evidence for a dynamic role of kakusei during foraging of bees, and eventually its possible involvement in learning and memory. Thus the kakusei gene could be used as key search tool in finding distinct molecular pathways that mediate diverse behavioral components of foraging.