Social insects are promising new models in aging research. Within single colonies, longevity differences of several magnitudes exist that can be found elsewhere only between different species. Reproducing queens (and, in termites, also kings) can live for several decades, whereas sterile workers often have a lifespan of a few weeks only. We studied aging in the wild in a highly social insect, the termite Macrotermes bellicosus, which has one of the most pronounced longevity differences between reproductives and workers. We show that gene-expression patterns differed little between young and old reproductives, implying negligible aging. By contrast, old major workers had many genes up-regulated that are related to transposable elements (TEs), which can cause aging. Strikingly, genes from the PIWI-interacting RNA (piRNA) pathway, which are generally known to silence TEs in the germline of multicellular animals, were down-regulated only in old major workers but not in reproductives. Continued up-regulation of the piRNA defense commonly found in the germline of animals can explain the long life of termite reproductives, implying somatic cooption of germline defense during social evolution. This presents a striking germline/soma analogy as envisioned by the superorganism concept: the reproductives and workers of a colony reflect the germline and soma of multicellular animals, respectively. Our results provide support for the disposable soma theory of aging.
SI_Archive_S1
File with 13,959 expressed genes after HTSeq
(mnat_only_expressed_genes.txt; Format: plain text)
SI_Archive_S2
All Primers used for qRT-PCR
(Primers.txt; Format: plain text)
Transcriptome contigs used to find primers
(Contigs.fa; Format: fasta)
Expression Results of the qRT-PCR
(qRT-PCR.xlsx; Format: Excel-File)
SI_Archive_S3
M. natalensis sequence identifiers for genes identified in Table S3 and respective results of the
search against the Pfam database, release 30
(mnat_te_def_GOI_Pfam30.txt; Format: plain text)
Sequence identifiers for genes identified in Dataset S10 of B. germanica, Z. nevadensis, C. secundus and M. natalensis with respective results of the search against the Pfam database, release 30.
(all_AGO1_hits.fasta.hmmscanPfam30.hits_per_sequence; Format: plain text)
(all_AGO2_hits.fasta.hmmscanPfam30.hits_per_sequence; Format: plain text)
(all_AGO3_hits.fasta.hmmscanPfam30.hits_per_sequence; Format: plain text)
(all_piwi_aub_hits.fasta.hmmscanPfam30.hits_per_sequence; Format: plain text)
SI_Archive_S4
Multiple Sequence Alignment of all CO1 sequences (M. natalensis and M. bellicosus)
(co1_m_bell_m_nat.aligned.fas; FASTA format)
Distance Matrix (Kimura corrected)
(aligned.distmat; Format: plain text)
SI_Archive_S5
Complete raw read counts after HTSeq
(raw_counts.csv; Format: csv)
Complete normalized raw read counts after DESeq2
(normalized_counts_deseq2.csv; Format: csv)
SI_Archive_S6
Full results of Orthofinder inferring orthologs between M. natalensis and D. melanogaster.
(OrthoFinder_OrthologousGroups_all_results_MNAT_DMEL.txt; Format: plain text)
Identified single copy orthologs (OrthoFinder) between M. natalensis and D. melanogaster.
(OrthoFinder_OrthologousGroups_single_copy_MNAT_DMEL.txt; Format: plain text)
SI_Archive_S7
DEG lists for caste wise comparison
(DEG_caste.csv; Format: csv)
SI_Archive_S8
Annotations obtained from InterProScan, Pfam and Dfam
Interproscan
(interproscan.tsv; Format: tsv)
Pfam
(pfam.out; Format: plain text)
Dfam
(dfam.out; Format: plain text)
SI_Archive_S9
Masked multiple sequence alignment for tree inference.
AGO1-3/Piwi/Aub set (ALICUT_ago1-3-piwi-aub.ginsi.vsm.fas; FASTA format)
SI_Archive_S10
Checking Mnat_13309 to confirm identiy as Ago3 with M. bellicosus de novo data.
(1_checking_trin_mbel.txt; Format: plain text)
(2_trin_ago3_vs_dmel; Format: plain text)
(pfam_domains_ago3_contig.txt; Format: plain text)
(protocol.txt; Format: plain text)
(Trinity_contig.fa; FASTA-Format)
(workflow.docx; Format: MS Word)