Scientists have discovered a way to make worker bees produce an enhanced version of royal jelly（蜂王浆） (RJ) -- the super-nutritious substance that dictates1 whether larvae2（幼虫） become workers or queens, and that is also renowned3 as a health supplement for people. Their study, which found that the super RJ that makes queen bee larvae grow 2-3 times larger than normal, appears in ACS' Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry.
Chia-Nan Chen and colleagues explain that royal jelly is a thick liquid made up of proteins, sugars and fats that is
secreted4（分泌） by
glands5 in the throats and
jaws6 of worker bees and fed to larvae. Workers feed all bee larvae RJ for the first three days of their lives, but only the queen gets it throughout life, growing larger and living up to 15 times longer than other bees. The scientists treated worker bees with drugs called
histone（组蛋白） deacetylase（脱乙酰酶） inhibitors (HDACis) to see whether they could enhance the larvae's growth.
They found that worker bees given HDACis produced a
fortified7 royal jelly that made the queen bee larvae grow to be 2-3 times larger than larvae fed standard royal jelly. A couple HDACis have already been approved for treating certain forms of cancer. The scientists
noted8 that this is the first study showing that the composition of RJ can be modified in a way that changes the body size of queen bees during development.
收听单词发音 
