NSF Postdoctoral Fellowship in Biology FY 2022: Quantifying the microbiome's contribution to host acclimation and evolution under stress

2022 财年 NSF 生物学博士后奖学金：量化微生物组对应激下宿主适应和进化的贡献

• 批准号: 2208910
• 负责人: Lana Bolin
• 金额: $ 13.8万
• 依托单位: Bolin, Lana Gayle
• 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: 2023-08-01 至 2025-07-31
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2208910&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: NSF; Postdoctoral; Fellowship; Biology; FY

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. Global environmental change is occurring at such a rapid pace that organisms are struggling to adapt to it. However, forecasts of species responses to change have left out potentially pivotal players: the microbes that live with organisms, called host-associated microbes. Soil microbes often benefit plants in new environments, but this benefit may ultimately reduce plants’ ability to evolve in response to these environments. This project investigates the relative strength of these opposing forces. That is, to understand whether microbes ultimately help or hinder plants in their responses to global change. The fellow will also conduct a case study as a mentor to local community college students. The case study focuses on drought stress on a common, native plant in New Mexico, the most water-stressed state in the US. Understanding the drivers and outcomes of host-associate microbes will yield more accurate predictions of species’ responses to global change. This project uses field experiments, metagenomic analyses, and population modeling to investigate the most important microbial, ecological, and evolutionary drivers of microbe-mediated host stress responses, and to scale these up to predict host population responses to future conditions. First, a field experiment will manipulate the presence/absence of microbes to quantify their relative influence on plant acclimation (e.g. buffering, plasticity) and adaptation (e.g. natural selection, opportunity for selection) to drought stress. Then, meta-genomic and -transcriptomic data will identify microbial properties that may underlie these effects. Finally, microbial effects on individuals will be scaled up to population growth using integral projection models that forecast how microbes will influence host persistence under future stress scenarios. The fellow will create a paid summer research program that brings local community college students to the University of New Mexico (UNM) campus to participate in this research, and to design and conduct independent research under the mentorship of the fellow and UNM graduate students. Altogether this project will expand the fellow’s range of experimental, computational, and modeling approaches for a future research faculty position, and construct a novel, general framework for innovative research on the evolutionary ecology of host-microbiome interactions to anchor a future research program.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。生命以创新的方式发生。全球环境变化的速度如此之快，以至于生物体正在努力适应它。然而，对物种对变化的反应的预测却忽略了潜在的关键参与者：与生物体共存的微生物，称为宿主相关微生物的微生物通常对新环境中的植物有益，但这种益处最终可能会降低植物响应这些环境的能力。该研究员还将作为当地社区大学生的导师进行案例研究，该案例研究的重点是新墨西哥州一种常见的本土植物的干旱胁迫，这是最缺水的植物。美国的压力状态。宿主相关微生物的驱动因素和结果将更准确地预测物种对全球变化的反应。该项目利用现场实验、宏基因组分析和种群模型来研究微生物介导的宿主最重要的微生物、生态和进化驱动因素。首先，现场实验将确定微生物的存在/不存在，以量化它们对植物适应（例如缓冲、可塑性）和适应的相对影响。然后，宏基因组和转录组数据将识别可能造成这些影响的微生物特性，最后，使用积分预测模型将微生物对个体的影响扩大到人口增长。预测微生物将如何影响宿主在未来压力情景下的持久性，该研究员将创建一个付费夏季研究项目，让当地社区学院的学生到新墨西哥大学 (UNM) 校园参与这项研究，并设计和进行独立研究。根据该项目将扩大该研究员未来研究教职的实验、计算和建模方法的范围，并为宿主微生物组进化生态学的创新研究构建一个新颖的通用框架。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。