PRFB FY 2021: Disentangling a Genetic Paradox: Leveraging European Green Crabs to Examine Genomic and Plastic Contributions to Thermal Tolerance

PRFB 2021 财年：解开遗传悖论：利用欧洲绿蟹检查基因组和塑料对耐热性的贡献

• 批准号: 2209018
• 负责人: Yaamini Venkataraman
• 金额: $ 13.8万
• 依托单位: Venkataraman, Yaamini Ranjani
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Fellowship Award
• 财政年份: 2023
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2023-04-01 至 2025-03-31
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2209018&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: PRFB; FY; 2021; Disentangling; Genetic

This action funds an NSF Postdoctoral Research Fellowship in Biology for FY 2022, 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. European green crabs (Carcinus maenas) are one of the world’s most successful marine invasive species, due in part to their ability to thrive across a range of temperatures. On the North American West Coast, invasive green crabs negatively impact species important for commercial shellfish production and tribal food sovereignty through competition with native crabs, predation of juvenile shellfish, and destruction of nursery eelgrass beds. In order to accurately predict and prevent further spread and damages, it is important to understand the factors that help this species tolerate temperature changes. This work will uncover how genetic and environmental factors contribute to an individual crab’s temperature tolerance. The fellow will expand on previous justice, diversity, equity, and inclusion work by developing lessons about genetics and marine invasions for under-resourced schools in the Greater Boston area. West Coast C. maenas populations are characterized by substantially lower genetic diversity than in their native range. Recent discovery of a supergene (block of genes inherited together) with amino acid-changing mutations strongly associated with thermal tolerance suggests a genetic basis for C. maenas thermotolerance at a population level. While population-level differences in thermal performance are important, they can obscure the individual variation in phenotypically plastic traits that influences thermotolerance. The fellow will pair whole-animal thermal physiology, transcriptomics, and metabolomics in adult C. maenas to disentangle thermal response variation associated with acclimatory plasticity and adaptive evolution. By leveraging the mechanistic understanding provided by high-throughput sequencing technologies such as untargeted transcriptomics and metabolomics, the fellow will elucidate impacts of temperature on molecular physiology that may not be easily observed by whole-organism response metrics alone. Molecular reprogramming identified by these methods will demonstrate how individual-level thermotolerance contributes to population stress responses. This research will quantify individual thermal tolerance variation and create a framework for dissecting the mechanistic underpinnings of plasticity-adaptation interactions. The methods can be applied to other systems, and will expand the fellow’s research breadth. The fellow will providing paid research opportunities for undergraduate students from historically excluded groups in ocean sciences, thus training students in ecophysiology and molecular biology while also developing mentorship skills necessary for the fellow to be a successful professor.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.

该行动资助 2022 财年 NSF 生物学博士后研究奖学金，研究基因组、环境和表型之间相互作用的生命规则的综合研究。该奖学金支持将为研究规则领域做出贡献的研究员的研究和培训。欧洲绿蟹（Carcinus maenas）是世界上最成功的海洋入侵物种之一，部分原因在于它们能够在北美的各种温度范围内繁衍生息。西海岸，入侵的绿蟹通过与本地蟹竞争、捕食幼体贝类以及破坏鳗草苗床，对对商业贝类生产和部落食物主权至关重要的物种产生负面影响。了解帮助该物种耐受温度变化的因素非常重要。这项工作将揭示遗传和环境因素如何影响个体螃蟹的温度耐受性。该研究员将通过开发有关遗传学的课程来扩展之前的正义、多样性、公平性和包容性工作。和海洋入侵大波士顿地区资源贫乏的学校的特点是遗传多样性比其本地范围低得多，最近发现了一种与热相关的氨基酸变化突变的超基因（一起遗传的基因组）。耐受性表明 C. maenas 在种群水平上的耐热性具有遗传基础，虽然种群水平的热性能差异很重要，但它们可能掩盖影响耐热性的表型塑料特征的个体差异。该研究员将利用非靶向转录组学和代谢组学等高通量测序技术提供的机制理解，研究成年 C. maenas 的生理学、转录组学和代谢组学，以解开与适应可塑性和适应性进化相关的热反应变化。仅通过整个生物体反应指标可能不容易观察到分子生理学，通​​过这些方法识别的分子重编程将证明个体水平的耐热性如何发挥作用。这项研究将量化个体的热耐受性变化，并创建一个剖析可塑性-适应相互作用的机制基础的框架，这些方法可以应用于其他系统，并将扩大该研究员的研究范围。为来自历史上被海洋科学排除的群体的本科生提供研究机会，从而培训学生生态生理学和分子生物学，同时培养该研究员成为一名成功教授所需的指导技能。该奖项反映了 NSF 的法定使命，并被认为是值得的通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估来提供支持。