Collaborative Research: RoL: The intersection between cell fate decisions and phenotypic diversification in a rapidly radiating butterfly lineage

合作研究：RoL：快速辐射蝴蝶谱系中细胞命运决定和表型多样化之间的交叉点

• 批准号: 2110533
• 负责人: Gregory Wray
• 金额: $ 71.02万
• 依托单位: Duke University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Continuing Grant
• 财政年份: 2021
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2021-08-15 至 2025-07-31
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2110533&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Collaborative; Research; RoL; intersection; between

Animal structures are made of combinations and arrangements of distinct cell types, the product of complex cell decision-making during development. But how do cells, which contain identical genetic information, decide their fate? This research addresses this fundamental biological question in a simple, yet spectacularly diverse animal structure–the color patterns on the wings of Heliconius butterflies. Although Heliconius wing patterns are highly diverse, they are created by altering the distribution of just three cell types (red, black and yellow wing scales) across the wing surface. Unlike in a complex organ, the cell decisions that create these patterns unfold on a flat canvas of non-migrating cells. This attribute greatly simplifies the process of understanding the interactions among genes and how these interactions change throughout development to create a specific pattern. This research capitalizes on this fact and emerging genomic tools to characterize the molecular decisions that determine how a developing wing cell becomes specified into one of the three different scale cell types. The project is strengthened by a 6-month internship program that targets traditionally underrepresented groups and offers an in-depth research experience and hands-on professional development. Moreover, through partnerships with science museums, this project will create bilingual (English and Spanish) experiential learning resources that harness the potential of butterflies to educate a variety of audiences (school children, teachers, and life-long learners) about genes, development, natural selection, and the role that interactions among them play in generating Earth’s biodiversity.Evolutionary processes constantly generate and rearrange specialized cell types, forging the morphological dimension of biodiversity. Research is starting to connect changes in gene expression and open chromatin to cell fate decisions. However, this research has mostly focused on early embryonic development or on the developmental trajectories of complex organs in a few species. Although powerful, these studies do not have an explicit goal of linking changes in cell fate decisions to phenotypic change. This research fills this important knowledge gap by characterizing the rules governing cell specification– from signals, to reception, transduction, transcriptional activation, and fate determination during the critical developmental period when the wing patterns of Heliconius butterflies are established. Here, extensive knowledge of the ecological and evolutionary significance of wing color patterns, experimental tractability, and fantastic diversity make Heliconius a powerful experimental system for understanding how the processes of cell specification are modified by natural selection to produce diversity. By casting single-cell transcriptomics, open chromatin profiling and CRISPR loss-of-function experiments within an evolutionary framework that includes replicated cases of the independent evolution of identical wing patterns, this project will determine the rules that govern how cells communicate and acquire a specialized fate during development, and how those rules are applied to generate diversity.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.

动物结构是由不同细胞类型的组合和排列组成的，是发育过程中复杂细胞决策的产物，但是包含相同遗传信息的细胞如何决定它们的命运？然而，动物结构却极其多样化——Heliconius蝴蝶翅膀上的颜色图案虽然Heliconius蝴蝶的翅膀图案高度多样化，但它们是通过改变翅膀表面的三种细胞类型（红色、黑色和黄色翼鳞）的分布而产生的。与复杂的情况不同器官中，创建这些模式的细胞决策在非迁移细胞的平面画布上展开，这一属性极大地简化了理解基因之间的相互作用以及这些相互作用如何在发育过程中变化以创建特定模式的过程。该项目通过为期 6 个月的实习计划得到加强，该计划针对传统上代表性不足的群体，并提供了一个内部的机会。深入的研究经验和此外，通过与科学博物馆的合作，该项目将创建双语（英语和西班牙语）体验式学习资源，利用蝴蝶的潜力来教育各种受众（学童、教师和终身学习者）。 ）关于基因、发育、自然选择以及它们之间的相互作用在产生地球生物多样性中所发挥的作用。进化过程不断产生和重新排列专门的细胞类型，形成生物多样性的形态维度。研究开始将基因表达的变化与开放联系起来。然而，这项研究主要集中在早期胚胎发育或少数物种的复杂器官的发育轨迹上，尽管这些研究很有效，但并没有将细胞命运决定的变化与表型联系起来的明确目标。这项研究通过描述赫利康蝴蝶翅膀图案形成的关键发育时期的细胞规范规则（从信号到接收、转导、转录激活和命运决定）来填补这一重要的知识空白。 Heliconius 对翅膀颜色模式的生态和进化意义的广泛了解、实验的易处理性和出色的多样性使 Heliconius 成为一个强大的实验系统，可用于了解自然选择如何改变细胞规格的过程，从而产生多样性。进化框架内的染色质分析和 CRISPR 功能丧失实验，包括相同翅膀图案独立进化的复制案例，该项目将确定控制细胞在发育过程中如何沟通和获得特殊命运的规则，以及这些规则如何应用于该奖项反映了 NSF 的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。