NSF PRFB FY23: Methylation and microbes as moderators of genotype-by-environment interactions

NSF PRFB FY23：甲基化和微生物作为基因型与环境相互作用的调节剂

• 批准号: 2305978
• 负责人: Monica Sheffer
• 金额: $ 24万
• 依托单位: Sheffer, Monica M
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Fellowship Award
• 财政年份: 2024
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2024-07-01 至 2027-06-30
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2305978&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: NSF; PRFB; FY23; Methylation; microbes

This action funds an NSF Postdoctoral Research Fellowship in Biology for FY 2023, 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. Predicting how organisms will react to climate change is challenging because their responses can seem random or unique to each individual. Linking processes that drive individual responses to outcomes at the level of populations or species could improve predictions. This project’s main goal is to study how two factors, changes to DNA structure and relationships with microbes, affect responses to the environment. The project investigates patterns in these factors across environments and over time in a grasshopper species. The project will test how including these factors improves predictions of the impacts of climate change. The fellow will partner with teachers and students at a local community college to find the best methods of explaining the impacts of climate change to broad audiences. The fellow will also involve community college and transfer students in the research process.The project investigates a rare combination of two significant emerging mechanisms in the study of ecological and evolutionary responses to variation in the environment: CpG methylation and microbiomes. Using a combination of approaches, the fellow will test the hypothesis that epigenetic changes and symbiotic relationships help to relax fitness constraints by improving survival at low elevation and easing temperature constraints on energy gain and fecundity at high elevation. The fellow will first characterize natural patterns in methylation and microbiomes across elevation, while controlling for genotype by using a field reciprocal transplant experiment. Next, laboratory common garden experiments will establish links between specific environmental factors and their effects on symbionts, methylation patterns, and phenotypic outcomes. Complementarily, experiments manipulating the microbiome, by feeding grasshoppers with sterile, antibiotic, or probiotic-treated food, will elucidate relationships between the microbiome, methylation levels, and phenotypic outcomes under controlled environments. Lastly, the fellow will analyze patterns in methylation and microbiomes over time in museum specimens, and use historical-contemporary comparisons to test whether these factors can better predict the impact of climate change on this grasshopper system. The fellow will gain teaching experience through her broader impacts plan, and increase the scope of approaches she uses to tackle her research questions by learning epigenetic methods.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.

这项行动资助了 2023 财年 NSF 生物学博士后研究奖学金，即研究基因组、环境和表型之间相互作用的生命规则的综合研究。该奖学金支持将为规则领域做出贡献的研究员的研究和培训。预测生物体对气候变化的反应具有挑战性，因为它们的反应对于每个个体来说似乎是随机的或独特的，可以改善在种群或物种层面上驱动个体反应的过程。该项目的主要目标是研究 DNA 结构的变化以及与微生物的关系这两个因素如何影响蚱蜢物种对环境的反应。该研究员将与当地社区大学的教师和学生合作，寻找向广大受众解释气候变化影响的最佳方法。该研究员还将涉及社区大学和转学。学生在研究过程中。该项目研究人员对环境变化的生态和进化反应研究中两种重要的新兴机制的罕见组合进行了研究：CpG 甲基化和微生物组，该研究员将使用多种方法来检验表观遗传变化和共生关系有助于放松健康的假设。该研究员将首先描述不同海拔地区甲基化和微生物组的自然模式，同时通过田间相互移植实验来控制基因型。常见的花园实验将建立特定环境因素及其对共生体、甲基化模式和表型结果的影响之间的联系，作为补充，通过在实验室给蚱蜢喂食无菌、抗生素或益生菌处理的食物来操纵微生物组的实验将阐明这些因素之间的关系。最后，该研究员将分析博物馆标本中甲基化和微生物组随时间变化的模式，并使用。该研究员将通过其更广泛的影响计划获得教学经验，并通过学习表观遗传学来扩大她用来解决研究问题的方法的范围。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。