The Molecular Basis of Caste Development and Evolution in Ants

蚂蚁种姓发展和进化的分子基础

• 批准号: 10260460
• 负责人: Waring Trible
• 金额: $ 42.25万
• 依托单位: HARVARD UNIVERSITY
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 财政年份: 2020
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2020-09-10 至 2025-08-31
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10260460
• 关键词: Adult; Agriculture; Animals; Ants; Award; Behavior; Biological; Biology; Castes; Categories; Cell Differentiation process; Communities; Comparative Study; Complex; Data; Defect; Development; Drosophila genus; Ecology; Environment; Epigenetic Process; Event; Evolution; Fossils; Future; Generations; Genes; Genetic; Genetic study; Genome; Goals; Health; Human; Individual; Investigation; Laboratories; Larva; Lead; Libraries; Medicine; Mentors; Methods; Modeling; Molecular; Morphology; Museums; Nature; Organism; Outcome; Persons; Phenocopy; Phenotype; Phylogenetic Analysis; Physiology; Population; Postdoctoral Fellow; Process; Property; Research; Research Personnel; Resources; Science; Signal Transduction; Social Interaction; Social Network; Source; System; Testing; Training; Validation; Variant; Wing; biological systems; cell type; circadian pacemaker; commune; comparative genomics; experience; genetic element; genetic evolution; genetic information; genetic manipulation; genetic variant; human disease; improved; insight; interest; laboratory experiment; large-scale database; meetings; mutant; nutrition; programs; response; skills; social; stem

PROJECT ABSTRACT The effects of genetic elements on human health are highly dependent both on other genes in the genome as well as external environmental influences. Understanding how functional biological systems arise from the integration of environmental and genetic information is a central research challenge that has implications for medicine, agriculture, and the response of our global ecology to a changing environment. In ants, environmental signals, including social interactions and nutrition, cause developing larvae to differentiate into distinct morphological castes as adults. These individuals cooperate to form a coherent social unit, analogous to the epigenetic processes of cell differentiation and cell signaling that underpin the development of unitary organisms. Caste development in ants provides an opportunity to understand how environmental information can induce alternative genetic programs at the level of an entire animal. Furthermore, the study of castes will allow us to understand how heterogeneous groups of individuals cooperate to produce functional collective behaviors, and the way that these groups can evolve. All of these topics are directly relevant to the genetic and cellular basis of human physiology and could greatly improve our understanding of human health. To identify and characterize the core mechanisms of caste development in ants, this proposal presents an integrative research program that spans multiple scales of biological organization: 1) The use of functional genetic manipulations and mutant libraries to study caste from a developmental perspective using highly controlled and replicated experimental methods. 2) The application of recent advances in population and comparative genomics to understand the genetic basis of caste evolution in natural ant populations and validation of results using laboratory experiments. 3) The generation of a large-scale database of caste morphology across both living and fossil ant species, and the application of these data to test specific predictions about how the mechanisms of caste development have constrained and facilitated caste evolution throughout the ants. This research will provide some of the first mechanistic insights into caste development and evolution, and will promote a unified understanding of epigenetics, phenotypic plasticity, and emergent properties in biological systems.

项目摘要 遗传因素对人类健康的影响高度依赖于其他 基因组中的基因以及外部环境影响。了解如何 功能生物系统源于环境和遗传的整合 信息是一个中心研究挑战，对医学有影响， 农业以及我们全球生态学对不断变化的环境的反应。在蚂蚁中， 环境信号，包括社交互动和营养，导致发展 幼虫与成年人分化为不同的形态种姓。这些人 合作形成一个连贯的社会单位，类似于细胞的表观遗传过程 分化和细胞信号传导，这些信号是统一生物的发展。 蚂蚁的种姓发展提供了一个了解环境如何的机会 信息可以在整个动物的水平上诱导替代遗传程序。 此外，对种姓的研究将使我们能够了解异质群体 个人合作产生功能性集体行为，以及 这些群体可以发展。所有这些主题与遗传和 人类生理学的细胞基础，可以大大提高我们对 人类健康。 为了识别和表征蚂蚁种姓发展的核心机制，这 提案提出了一项综合研究计划，该计划涵盖了多个尺度的 生物组织：1）使用功能遗传操作和突变体 使用高度控制和 复制的实验方法。 2）最新进展的人口 和比较基因组学以了解自然种姓进化的遗传基础 使用实验室实验的蚂蚁种群和结果验证。 3）一代 在生物和化石蚂蚁物种中，种姓形态的大规模数据库， 以及这些数据用于测试有关机制如何的特定预测 种姓发展的整个过程都限制并促进了种姓的演变 蚂蚁。这项研究将为种姓提供一些最初的机械见解 发展和进化，并将促进对表观遗传学的统一理解， 表型可塑性和生物系统中的新兴特性。