Evidence for vitellogenin <scp>DNA</scp>‐binding in honey bees
Bibliographic record
Abstract
DNA-binding proteins play essential roles in DNA replication, DNA repair, DNA organization, and several aspects of gene regulation. Their well-studied structures and charge configurations aid in identifying similar functions in other proteins. Vitellogenin (Vg) is a highly conserved protein that is central to egg-yolk formation in most animal taxa. The protein is largely viewed as a transporter, but effects on immunity and behavior are documented. Experiments in honey bees (Apis mellifera) additionally suggest a role in gene regulation. The possibility of Vg-DNA binding has broad relevance due to Vg being phylogenetically widespread and having descendant proteins relevant to human cardiovascular health. Previously, we found that a Vg subunit can translocate to the honey bee nucleus and interact with DNA. Now, we provide a structural explanation for Vg's DNA-binding potential by identifying conserved DNA-binding amino acids in structural regions similar to established DNA-binding proteins. Next, we examined how Vg-DNA binding may elicit gene expression changes in honey bee workers, characterized by distinct changes in Vg levels over their lifetimes. Finally, we identify other nuclear proteins likely bound to the Vg-DNA complex in honey bees. Our data suggest that Vg-DNA binding is associated with expression changes in dozens of genes and that the Vg-DNA complex interacts with dozens more nuclear proteins. We propose that Vg-DNA binding can regulate several important processes in honey bee workers, including energy metabolism, behavior, and signaling. Due to the conserved nature of Vg and its descendant proteins, these functions may be present in various animals, including humans.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".