---
title: "Molecular signatures of plastic phenotypes in two eusocial insect species with simple societies"
url: "https://phil.ewels.co.uk/publications/2015/patalano-proceedings-of-the-national-academy-of-sciences"
site: "phil.ewels.co.uk"
author: "Phil Ewels"
section: "Publications"
journal: "Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences"
published: "2015-10-19"
doi: "https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1515937112"
authors: "Solenn Patalano, Anna Vlasova, Chris Wyatt, Philip Ewels, Francisco Camara, Pedro G. Ferreira, Claire L. Asher, Tomasz P. Jurkowski, Anne Segonds-Pichon, Martin Bachman, Irene González-Navarrete, André E. Minoche, Felix Krueger, Ernesto Lowy, Marina Marcet-Houben, Jose Luis Rodriguez-Ales, Fabio S. Nascimento, Shankar Balasubramanian, Toni Gabaldon, James E. Tarver, Simon Andrews, Heinz Himmelbauer, William O. H. Hughes, Roderic Guigó, Wolf Reik, Seirian Sumner"
---

# Molecular signatures of plastic phenotypes in two eusocial insect species with simple societies

## Significance

In eusocial insect societies, such as ants and some bees and wasps, phenotypes are highly plastic, generating alternative phenotypes (queens and workers) from the same genome. The greatest plasticity is found in simple insect societies, in which individuals can switch between phenotypes as adults. The genomic, transcriptional, and epigenetic underpinnings of such plasticity are largely unknown. In contrast to the complex societies of the honeybee, we find that simple insect societies lack distinct transcriptional differentiation between phenotypes and coherently patterned DNA methylomes. Instead, alternative phenotypes are largely defined by subtle transcriptional network organization. These traits may facilitate genomic plasticity. These insights and resources will stimulate new approaches and hypotheses that will help to unravel the genomic processes that create phenotypic plasticity.

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From the personal website of Phil Ewels, a software developer and bioinformatician in Stockholm, Sweden: https://phil.ewels.co.uk/
The whole site as Markdown: https://phil.ewels.co.uk/llms.txt