Identifying transcriptomic indicators of growth rate and environmental stress in marine phytoplankton

识别海洋浮游植物生长速率和环境压力的转录组指标

基本信息

批准号：
RGPIN-2022-02950
负责人：
Finkel, Zoe
金额：
$ 3.72万
依托单位：
Dalhousie University
依托单位国家：
加拿大
项目类别：
Discovery Grants Program - Individual
财政年份：
2022
资助国家：
加拿大
起止时间：
2022-01-01 至 2023-12-31
项目状态：
已结题

来源：
https://www.nserc-crsng.gc.ca/ase-oro/Details-Detailles_eng.asp?id=761594
关键词：
Identifying transcriptomic indicators growth rate

项目摘要

Marine phytoplankton are an extremely diverse group of organisms that perform about half the photosynthesis on Earth and play a key role in the carbon cycle. Climate warming is expected have dramatic effects on environmental conditions that influence both the productivity and taxonomic composition of marine phytoplankton communities. The diversity and complex evolutionary history of the phytoplankton presents challenges for modelers who seek to project changes to phytoplankton productivity and biogeography and subsequent impacts on biogeochemistry in response to climate warming. Thousands of plankton species are routinely grouped into a few functional types, that are distinguished by a small number of ecological and physiological traits that that are poorly constrained by data. Transcriptomics can be used to monitor gene expression of phytoplankton communities in situ and provide us with a much more mechanistic understanding of how and why different phytoplankton species and/or functional groups respond to changing environmental conditions. Here we propose to identify differentially expressed genes associated with growth rate and with acclimation to several environmental conditions under different time-scales from transient application of a new environmental condition to multi-generation acclimation, across several ecologically important marine phytoplankton taxa in controlled lab cultures. This work will allow us to identify universal transcriptomic signals associated with phytoplankton growth rate and acclimation to environmental conditions, and will provide the beginnings of a database that can be used to interpret the increasing number of marine phytoplankton metatranscriptomes taken from the field, and facilitate the identification of the genetic bases of key traits that define phytoplankton functional groups for next-generation biogeochemical models.

海洋浮游植物是极其多样化的生物体，它们进行地球上大约一半的光合作用，并在碳循环中发挥关键作用。预计气候变暖会对环境条件产生巨大影响，从而影响海洋浮游植物群落的生产力和分类组成。浮游植物的多样性和复杂的进化历史给建模者带来了挑战，他们试图预测浮游植物生产力和生物地理学的变化以及随后对生物地球化学的影响，以应对气候变暖。数以千计的浮游生物物种通常被分为几种功能类型，这些功能类型的特点是少数很少受数据约束的生态和生理特征。转录组学可用于监测浮游植物群落的原位基因表达，并为我们提供关于不同浮游植物物种和/或功能群如何以及为何响应不断变化的环境条件的更机械的理解。在这里，我们建议在受控实验室培养物中的几个生态上重要的海洋浮游植物类群中，识别与生长速率和在不同时间尺度下从短暂应用新环境条件到多代驯化相关的差异表达基因。这项工作将使我们能够识别与浮游植物生长速率和环境条件适应相关的通用转录组信号，并将提供一个数据库的开端，该数据库可用于解释从野外获取的越来越多的海洋浮游植物宏转录组，并促进鉴定定义下一代生物地球化学模型的浮游植物功能群的关键性状的遗传基础。