Dr Anja Buttstedt, a Feodor Lynen Fellow funded by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation has joined the Social Insect Research Group (SIRG) of the Department of Zoology and Entomology in January this year.

Her research focuses on the evolution of new protein functions using the Major royal jelly protein (MJRP) family of the insect order Hymenoptera as model system. Whereas most of the sequenced hymenopteran species do only possess a single MJRP gene, this gene multiplied seemingly randomly in some genera, e.g., the parasitoid wasps Nasonia and the eusocial honey bees Apis, and gave rise to gene clusters with up to ten gene copies. Such gene dupli-/multiplications are known to be major drivers of evolution, as the function of the original gene remains untouched whereas the copy may be changed into something that eventually enhances the fitness of the carrier.

During Dr Buttstedt’s functional elucidation of MRJPs in honey bees, she and her colleagues recently showed that indeed at least one of the ten MRJPs, namely MRJP1, neofunctionalised and became essential for the survival of the entire genus (Buttstedt et al., 2018). MRJP1 is amongst others in form of a protein complex involved in sterol provisioning of honey bee larvae.

Her research at the University of Pretoria is hosted by Dr Abdullahi Yusuf (SIRG) and aims on the elucidation of the molecular basis of this sterol provisioning.

Dr Buttstedt completed her PhD in Biochemistry from the Martin-Luther-University Halle-Wittenberg (MLU), Germany in 2011. Her passion for honey bees started in 2012 during her postdoctoral research at the University of Agricultural Sciences and Veterinary Medicine in Cluj-Napoca, Romania.