CYP9E Expression and Repertoire in Lasius Ants: Making the Ecological Connection

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Svetlana S. Zhukova¹, Vitaly D. Djabrailov², Mikhail Belenky³, and Victoria A. Scobeyeva^1,4,a*

¹Faculty of Biology, Lomonosov Moscow State University, 119234 Moscow, Russia

²Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology, 141701 Dolgoprudny, Moscow Region, Russia

³Independent researcher, Haifa, Israel

⁴Belozersky Research Institute of Physical and Chemical Biology, Lomonosov Moscow State University, 119234 Moscow, Russia

^* To whom correspondence should be addressed.

Received: July 10, 2025; Revised: January 19, 2026; Accepted: January 20, 2026

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Ecological adaptations of a species can be shaped by its repertoire of gene variants. The black garden ant Lasius niger shows high level of CYP9E duplication. In contrast to its congener, the jet ant L. fuliginosus, it exhibits tolerance toward fungus-infected aphids. In these two species, we compared expression of a subset of CYP9E genes, potentially involved in mycotoxin metabolism. No significant differences in expression were found. Similarly to L. niger, the jet ant has six copies of these genes, grouping pairwise on the phylogenetic tree with their L. niger counterparts. Beyond the gene subset targeted in the expression study, we found multiple CYP9E genes in the genomes of L. niger, L. fuliginosus, and – fewer by a third – in the outgroup Formica rufa, suggesting CYP9E amplification as an ancestral trait of the genus Lasius or a more basal clade.

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KEY WORDS: cytochrome P450, black garden ant Lasius niger, jet ant Lasius fuliginosus, CYP450 9e2 expression, gene copy number

DOI: 10.1134/S0006297926600146

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