Biological functions of the royal jelly proteins
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Key Words:royal jelly, MRJPs, biofunctions
Abstract:Royal jelly (RJ) is thick, milky material with multiple bioactivities, which is confirmed to be secreted from both hypopharyngeal and mandibular glands of nurse bees. In a colony of bees, the queen is fed on RJ throughout the whole life, while all the other larvae are fed on RJ only for the first 3 days after hatching. Some functions of RJ proteins have been determined, such as the immunomodulatory activity of MRJP3, the antibacterial activity of JelleineIIV and Royalisin, the antitumour activity and the potential modulatory activity of honeybee social behavior of MRJP1, the stimulating cell growth activity of 57 kDaprotein and Apisimin, the antifatigue of 57 kDa protein and so on. The proteinscan be isolated and purified from RJ directly or obtained by genes expression in vitro now. With the development of protein isolation, gene cloning and expression, and functions studies, RJ proteins will be used in more and more fields such as biological medicine, cell culture and tissue engineering.