The sequence of the DNA contains coding and non-coding regions. The role of the non-coding regions is not known and is hypothesized to maintain the structure of the DNA. This study aimed to investigate the structure of the non-coding sequences in honey bees utilizing bioinformatics. The non-coding sequences of the mtDNA of three honey bee species Apis dorosata, Apis florea, Apis cerana, and ten subspecies of Apis mellifera were investigated. Different techniques were utilized to explore the non-coding regions of these bees including sequence analysis, phylogenetic relationships, enzymatic digestion, and statistical tests. Variations in size and sequences of nucleotides were detected in the studied species and subspecies, but with the same nucleotide abundance (i.e. nucleotides A were more than T and nucleotides G were less than C). The phylogenetic tree based on the non-coding regions was partially similar to the known phylogenetic relationships between these bees. The enzymatic digestion using four restriction enzymes confirmed the results of the phylogenetic relationships. The statistical analysis based on numerical codes for nucleotides showed the absence of significant variations between the studied bees in their sequences in a similar way to results of neutrality tests. This study suggests that the non-coding regions have the same functional role in all the studied bees regardless of the number of nucleotides, and not just to maintain the structure of the DNA. This is approximately the first study to shade lights on the non-coding regions of the mtDNA of honey bees.

DNA序列包含编​​码区和非编码区。非编码区的作用尚不清楚，推测其作用是维持 DNA 的结构。本研究旨在利用生物信息学研究蜜蜂非编码序列的结构。研究了三种蜜蜂品种Apis dorosata、Apis florea、Apis cerana和Apis mellifera 10 个亚种的mtDNA 非编码序列。使用不同的技术来探索这些蜜蜂的非编码区域，包括序列分析、系统发育关系、酶消化和统计测试。在所研究的物种和亚种中检测到核苷酸大小和序列的变化，但核苷酸丰度相同（即核苷酸A大于T，核苷酸G小于C）。基于非编码区的系统发育树与这些蜜蜂之间已知的系统发育关系部分相似。使用四种限制性酶的酶消化证实了系统发育关系的结果。基于核苷酸数字代码的统计分析表明，与中性测试结果类似，所研究的蜜蜂之间的序列不存在显着差异。这项研究表明，无论核苷酸数量如何，非编码区在所有研究的蜜蜂中都具有相同的功能作用，而不仅仅是维持 DNA 的结构。这大约是第一个对蜜蜂 mtDNA 非编码区域进行遮光的研究。