ArticleCurrent biology : CB2016
Robust DNA Methylation in the Clonal Raider Ant Brain.
Article in Current biology : CB, 2016. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 66 papers.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Who cites it
66 citing papers in PubMed, 169 citations in OpenAlex.
- Genome Evolution in Social Insects.Genome biology and evolution · 2026Review
- Article
- Seasonal timing in a changing world: the epigenetic link between environment and reproduction across taxa.Environmental epigenetics · 2026Article
- Neuropeptides specify and reprogram division of labor in the leafcutter ant Atta cephalotes.Cell · 2025Article
- Transgenerational epigenetic effect of kings' aging on offspring's caste fate mediated by sperm DNA methylation in termites.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025Article
- Exploring changes in social spider DNA methylation profiles in all cytosine contexts following infection.Heredity · 2024Article
- Hormonal gatekeeping via the blood-brain barrier governs caste-specific behavior in ants.Cell · 2023Article
- Coevolution of the CDCA7-HELLS ICF-related nucleosome remodeling complex and DNA methyltransferases.eLife · 2023Article
- Coevolution of the CDCA7-HELLS ICF-related nucleosome remodeling complex and DNA methyltransferases.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2023Article
- Behavioural individuality determines infection risk in clonal ant colonies.Nature communications · 2023Article
- Integrated Analysis of DNA Methylome and Transcriptome Reveals Epigenetic Regulation of Cold Tolerance inInternational journal of molecular sciences · 2023Article
- The role of Dmnt1 during spermatogenesis of the insect Oncopeltus fasciatus.Epigenetics & chromatin · 2023Article
- Associations between DNA methylation and gene regulation depend on chromatin accessibility during transgenerational plasticity.BMC biology · 2023Article
- DNMT1 mutant ants develop normally but have disrupted oogenesis.Nature communications · 2023Article
- Article
- ChIP-seq profiling of H3K4me3 and H3K27me3 in an invasive insect,Frontiers in genetics · 2023Article
- DNA methylation and expression of the egfr gene are associated with worker size in monomorphic ants.Scientific reports · 2022Article
- Complex regulatory role of DNA methylation in caste- and age-specific expression of a termite.Open biology · 2022Article
- Changes in gene body methylation do not correlate with changes in gene expression in Anthozoa or Hexapoda.BMC genomics · 2022Article
- Review
6 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
4 authors at 2 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
Abstract
Social insects are promising model systems for epigenetics due to their immense morphological and behavioral plasticity. Reports that DNA methylation differs between the queen and worker castes in social insects [1-4] have implied a role for DNA methylation in regulating division of labor. To better understand the function of DNA methylation in social insects, we performed whole-genome bisulfite sequencing on brains of the clonal raider ant Cerapachys biroi, whose colonies alternate between reproductive (queen-like) and brood care (worker-like) phases [5]. Many cytosines were methylated in all replicates (on average 29.5% of the methylated cytosines in a given replicate), indicating that a large proportion of the C. biroi brain methylome is robust. Robust DNA methylation occurred preferentially in exonic CpGs of highly and stably expressed genes involved in core functions. Our analyses did not detect any differences in DNA methylation between the queen-like and worker-like phases, suggesting that DNA methylation is not associated with changes in reproduction and behavior in C. biroi. Finally, many cytosines were methylated in one sample only, due to either biological or experimental variation. By applying the statistical methods used in previous studies [1-4, 6] to our data, we show that such sample-specific DNA methylation may underlie the previous findings of queen- and worker-specific methylation. We argue that there is currently no evidence that genome-wide variation in DNA methylation is associated with the queen and worker castes in social insects, and we call for a more careful interpretation of the available data.
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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.