NSF Postdoctoral Fellowship in Biology FY 2020

2020 财年 NSF 生物学博士后奖学金

• 批准号: 2010290
• 负责人: Daniel Friedman
• 金额: $ 13.8万
• 依托单位: Friedman, Daniel A
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Fellowship Award
• 财政年份: 2020
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2020-10-01 至 2023-09-30
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2010290&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: NSF; Postdoctoral; Fellowship; Biology; FY

This action funds an NSF Postdoctoral Research Fellowship in Biology for FY 2020, Integrative Research Investigating the Rules of Life Governing Interactions Between Genomes, Environment and Phenotypes. The fellowship supports research and training of the Fellow that will contribute to the area of Rules of Life in innovative ways. This research investigates the ecology and evolution of the Hymenoptera, the order of insects containing species such as ants, bees, wasps, and sawflies. The work contributes to our scientific understanding of how genetics, epigenetics, behavior, and ecology are related over developmental and ecological time scales, in the context of a well-studied and biodiverse clade of insects. This project addresses fundamental questions in biology including: How did colony living (eusociality) arise in ants and bees from their solitary ancestors? How do colony traits originate and become elaborate? How are the hormonal and neurobiological underpinnings of colony traits linked to genetic and ecological variation among species? How might these insights from eusocial colony evolution help humans design resilient distributed systems, for example to respond to disasters, manage socially-spread pathogens, and improve the security of cyberphysical systems? The Fellow will also actively engage in science communication, mentoring, and outreach programs, with a special emphasis on local underserved communities, team-based remote education, and transdisciplinary approaches such as Complexity Science.Eusocial (colony-living) insect species display variation within populations and among species in ecologically-important colony traits such as behavior (e.g. collective foraging, search, offense/defense) and reproductive strategies. Tissue-specific gene expression patterns can influence colony traits such as collective behavior in a non-linear fashion through altering colony-level physiological processes. Previous approaches to studying the evolution of eusocial insect colony traits have been of limited phylogenetic scope, have not considered the role of tissue-specific gene expression in colony-level physiological processes, or only considered genes with single-copy orthologs present in all species considered. This project will integrate multiple biological techniques (phylogenomics, transcriptomics, chemical profiling, ecological niche modeling) to investigate the evolutionary and functional roles of lineage-specific genes, complex gene families, and tissue-specific expression patterns in Hymenoptera. More broadly, the theoretical models and bioinformatic pipelines developed in this research will generalize far beyond the Hymenoptera, and provide avenues for integrative synthesis across taxa. The Fellow will be co-trained by Prof. Brian Johnson (University of California, Davis) and Prof. Tim Linksvayer (University of Pennsylvania), and will work to increase participation, inclusion, reproducibility, and transparency in science.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.

该行动为2020财年生物学的NSF博士后研究奖学金提供了资金，该研究综合研究研究了有关基因组，环境和表型之间相互作用的生活规则。奖学金支持对研究员的研究和培训，这些研究和培训将以创新的方式为生活规则做出贡献。这项研究调查了膜翅目的生态和进化，即含有蚂蚁，蜜蜂，黄蜂和锯蝇的昆虫的序列。这项工作有助于我们对遗传学，表观遗传学，行为和生态学如何在发育和生态时间尺度上如何相关的科学理解，这是在昆虫的良好和生物多样性的背景下。该项目解决了生物学中的基本问题，包括：殖民地生活（Eusociality）是如何来自其孤独祖先的蚂蚁和蜜蜂中的？殖民地特征如何产生并变得精致？菌落特征的激素和神经生物学基础与物种之间的遗传和生态变异有关？这些来自Eusocial Colony Evolution的见解如何帮助人类设计有弹性的分布式系统，例如对灾难做出反应，管理社会传播的病原体并提高网络物理系统的安全性？该研究员还将特别强调当地服务不足的社区，基于团队的远程教育和跨学科的方法，例如复杂性科学。组织特异性基因表达模式可以通过改变菌落级生理过程以非线性方式影响群落特征，例如非线性行为。先前研究真诚昆虫集落特征进化的方法是系统发育范围有限的，没有考虑组织特异性基因表达在菌落级生理过程中的作用，或者仅考虑在所有物种中都存在的单拷贝直源性的基因。该项目将整合多种生物学技术（系统生物学，转录组学，化学分析，生态生态位模型），以研究谱系特异性基因，复杂基因家族和组织特异性表达模式在膜翅目中的进化和功能作用。更广泛地说，这项研究中开发的理论模型和生物信息学的管道将概括远远超出膜翅目，并为整个分类单元提供综合合成的途径。该研究员将由布莱恩·约翰逊（Brian Johnson）教授（加州大学达维斯大学）和蒂姆·林克斯瓦耶（Tim Linksvayer）教授（宾夕法尼亚大学）教授，并将努力提高科学的参与，包容性，重复性和透明度。该奖项反映了NSF的法定任务，并通过评估范围来反映出支持者的知识群体的支持者，并愿意通过评估范围来进行评估。