NSFDEB-BSF: Uneasy alliances: emergent properties and feedback mechanisms among manipulative endosymbiotic communities

NSFDEB-BSF：不稳定的联盟：操纵性内共生群落之间的新兴特性和反馈机制

• 批准号: 1953223
• 负责人: Jennifer White
• 金额: $ 82.01万
• 依托单位: University of Kentucky Research Foundation
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Continuing Grant
• 财政年份: 2020
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2020-08-01 至 2024-07-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1953223&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: NSFDEB; BSF; Uneasy; alliances; emergent

Unseen microbes influence the health and well-being of larger organisms, from humans to plants to insects. Some of these microbes cause disease, some are harmless, some are beneficial, and sometimes their effect depends on other microbes that are present in the same host organism. These microbial communities, or “microbiomes”, that share the same host can be very complicated, making it difficult to understand how different microbes affect each other and the host. However, arthropods such as insects and spiders often have simpler microbial communities that can serve as useful models for understanding microbial interactions and their combined effects on the host. Additionally, these simple microbial communities are often heritable, passed directly from arthropod mother to offspring, and can have major effects on their host’s biology and reproduction. In this project, the researchers will use a spider model system to investigate the consequences of microbe interactions. The agricultural spider, Mermessus fradeorum, can host a community of up to 5 strains of inherited bacteria. These bacteria manipulate the spider’s reproduction in complex ways that depend on which combination of bacterial strains are present. The expected research results will be particularly important for current and future efforts to use specific arthropod-hosted bacteria to manipulate and control arthropods that can transmit diseases. Undergraduate students, with an emphasis on the inclusion of underrepresented groups, will be trained through classroom activities, individual research experiments, and summer research internships. Outreach to the public will include spider-oriented events at schools and public events, including development of spider-oriented discovery cart series series at the University of Kentucky Arboretum.The researchers will determine how the presence or absence of different bacteria affect: 1) the quantity and location of other members of the bacterial community within the host’s body, 2) the resulting reproductive biology of the spider, and 3) the spread of different bacterial community types in the spider population. The researchers will then use mathematical models to make more general predictions about how co-hosted bacteria cooperate versus compete within their shared host. The researchers will use antibiotics to differentially cure spiders of various strains of bacterial symbiont, then compare localization and quantity of other bacterial community members using fluorescent in situ hybridization (FISH) microscopy and quantitative PCR. The reproductive phenotype of differentially infected spiders will be evaluated via controlled matings to assess reproductive compatibility among different infection types and offspring sex ratio. Spiders with different symbiont communities will then be assembled into replicated laboratory populations that will be allowed to evolve over several generations, to assess the effects of the within-host microbial community on interactions among hosts with different microbial symbionts, and also to whether host population structure feeds back to affect the composition of the within-host symbiont community. Analytical and simulation models will be used to tie within-host interactions of co-infecting bacteria to among-host dynamics of population infection, which will provide a generalized framework for understanding bacterial interactions in more complex systems. This proposal was co-reviewed and co-funded by the Divisions of Environmental Biology and Integrative Biology in the Directorate for Biological Sciences.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

看不见的微生物会影响从人到植物再到昆虫的大生物体的健康和福祉。这些微生物中的一些引起疾病，有些是无害的，有些是有益的，有时它们的作用取决于同一宿主生物中存在的其他微生物。共享同一宿主的这些微生物群落或“微生物组”可能非常复杂，因此很难理解不同的微生物如何相互影响和宿主。但是，昆虫和蜘蛛等节肢动物通常具有更简单的微生物群落，可以作为理解微生物相互作用及其对宿主的综合作用的有用模型。此外，这些简单的微生物群落通常是可遗传的，直接从节肢动物母亲传给了后代，并且可以对宿主的生物学和繁殖产生重大影响。在这个项目中，研究人员将使用蜘蛛模型系统来研究微生物相互作用的后果。农业蜘蛛Mermessus Fragmentorum可以容纳一个多达5种遗传细菌的社区。这些细菌以复杂的方式操纵蜘蛛的生殖，取决于存在细菌菌株的组合。预期的研究结果对于当前和未来的努力使用特定的节肢动物托管细菌来操纵和控制可以传播疾病的节肢动物的努力尤为重要。本科生将通过课堂活动，个人研究实验和夏季研究实习进行培训，重点是包括代表性不足的群体。 Outreach to the public will include spider-oriented events at schools and public events, including development of spider-oriented discovery cart series series at the University of Kentucky Arboretum.The researchers will determine how the presence or absence of different bacteria affect: 1) the quantity and location of other Members of the bacterial community within the host’s body, 2) the resulting reproductive biology of the spider, and 3) the spread of different bacterial community types in the蜘蛛种群。然后，研究人员将使用数学模型来对共同托管的共同主持人如何合作进行更一般的预测。研究人员将使用抗生素来治愈各种细菌符号菌株的蜘蛛，然后比较其他细菌的定位和数量。使用荧光原位杂交（FISH）显微镜和定量PCR的社区成员。将通过受控的分子评估不同感染的蜘蛛的生殖表型，以评估不同感染类型和后代性别比例之间的生殖兼容性。然后将具有不同共生群落社区的蜘蛛组装成复制的实验室人群中，这些实验室人群将被允许在几代人的身上发展，以评估宿主内部微生物社区对具有不同微生物符号的宿主之间的相互作用，以及宿主种群结构是否会返回以影响内部主持人象征社区的组成。分析模型和仿真模型将用于将共同感染细菌的宿主相互作用与人群感染的主机动力学之间的联系，这将为理解更复杂的系统中的细菌相互作用提供广义框架。该提案是由环境生物学和综合生物学局在生物科学局中共同审查和共同资助的。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并被认为是通过基金会的智力优点和更广泛影响的评估标准通过评估来获得的支持。