Journal: Nature Communications
Article Title: Gut microbiota-derived butyrate primes systemic immunity in honey bees by mediating lipid metabolic reprogramming
doi: 10.1038/s41467-026-69073-0
Figure Lengend Snippet: a Survival rates of GF, CL (inoculated with a set of five core bacteria mixed at equal numbers), acetate-supplemented, and butyrate-supplemented bees following Hafnia injection. Bars represent mean ± s.d. n = 3 replicates for each group (30 individuals per replicate). The results are from one of two independent experiments (Supplementary Fig. for replicate data). A two-sided Mantel-Cox test was used. Different letters above bars indicate statistically significant differences among treatments ( P < 0.05). b Abdominal butyrate concentrations for GF, CL, and single bacterium-inoculated bees 5 days post-colonization. Ga: Gilliamella ; Sa: Snodgrassella ; Ba: Bifidobacterium ; F4: Bombilactobacillus ; F5: Lactobacillus . The isolates for each strain are listed in Supplementary Table . Bars represent mean ± s.e.m. n = 3 replicates for each group, each replicate pooled from 3 individuals from 3 cup cages. The experiment was repeated twice with similar results. One-way ANOVA with the Tukey post hoc test. Different letters above bars indicate statistically significant differences among treatments ( P < 0.05). c AMP expression in the fat bodies of GF, CV, CL, and butyrate-supplemented bees, before Hafnia infection and 3 h after infection (GF as control). Bars represent mean ± s.e.m. n = 8 individuals for each group from 3 cup cages. Gene expression was quantified using qPCR as shown in Fig. . Two-sided Mann–Whitney test and two-sided unpaired Student’s t test, depending on data normality. ns: not significant, * P < 0.05, ** P < 0.01, and *** P < 0.001. Created in BioRender. Liu, L. (2025) https://BioRender.com/hdvmsxq . d CM-DiI-stained hemocytes (red) of GF, HK, CL, and butyrate-supplemented bees before infection and at 3 h post-GFP- Hafnia infection (green). Dorsal vessels were outlined with white dashed lines. Scale bars: 250 μm. Representative images from one of two independent experiments (see Supplementary Figs. , for replicate data). All P values are listed in Supplementary Dataset . Source data are provided as a Source Data file.
Article Snippet: At 3, 6, 12, and 24 h after Hafnia infection, bees were injected thoracically with 2 μL of a solution containing 67 μM Celltracker CM-DiI (Cat#40718ES50, Yeasen, China) and 1.08 mM Hoechst 33342 (Cat#C0031, Solarbio, China) in PBS.
Techniques: Bacteria, Injection, Expressing, Infection, Control, Gene Expression, MANN-WHITNEY, Staining