A snapshot and pipeline for tissue-specific gene expression meta-analysis in honey bees

The honey bee ( Apis mellifera ) is a key model organism for complex social behavior and physiology, where tissue-specific gene expression (TSGE) is difficult to analyze given large bioinformatics datasets and manual tissue processing. We present a meta-analytic approach to TSGE in A. mellifera using open-source bioinformatics packages: from an initial pool of 4,349 samples and 12,398 loci, rigorous analysis yields a publicly available snapshot of 731 samples and 177 loci representing high-quality TSGE estimates, intended as a reusable resource for honey bee and comparative gene-expression research.