FIBR: BeeSpace - An Interactive Environment for Analyzing Nature and Nurture in Societal Roles

生物学中最重要的问题之一是行为的起源：先天还是后天？这项研究将利用基因组生物学将行为研究从这种二分法的束缚中解放出来。新的范式是环境（“养育”），包括其他个体，通过在动物的一生中协调基因表达来影响遗传基因组（“自然”）。该项目将以西方蜜蜂为模式生物，在前所未有的全基因组规模上分析社会行为。蜜蜂生活在一个复杂的社会中，由与年龄相关的劳动分工所支配，每个个体在她的一生中扮演着许多角色。基因遗传和环境条件都决定了蜜蜂扮演什么角色，以及什么时候扮演。这项生物学研究将为所有社会行为生成一个独特的基因表达数据库，记录数百个个体的大脑基因表达，每个个体都有特定的社会角色。这些微阵列实验利用最近测序的基因组，由最先进的统计数据支持。信息学研究将开发一个互动的环境来分析与蜜蜂社会行为相关的所有信息源。其中包括蜜蜂和相关生物的基因组数据库，与昆虫行为相关的完整科学文献相关联。新的文本挖掘技术将分子描述与生理学、行为学、神经科学和进化的信息相结合。BeeSpace环境将使用户能够浏览不同数据库和文献来源的统一空间，以进行假设开发和测试。该软件系统将超越一个可搜索的数据库，使用统计文献分析来发现基因和行为之间的功能关系。这项研究将使所有研究蜜蜂基因的科学家生活在整合生物学的前沿，生物技术使常规表达分析和生物信息学使功能分析不受现有类别的限制。互动环境对功能分析的更广泛影响将在研究蜜蜂和相关生物的国际实验室社区中进行测试。BeeSpace的外展将提供研究生和本科阶段的综合研究和教育经验，以及高中和初中阶段的培训课程和少数民族外展。

One of the most important questions in biology is the origin of behavior: nature or nurture? This research will use genomic biology to liberate the study of behavior from the shackles of this dichotomy. The new paradigm is that the environment ("nurture"), which includes other individuals, impacts an inherited genome ("nature") by orchestrating gene expression during the lifetime of the animal. This project will analyze social behavior on an unprecedented whole-genome scale, using Apis mellifera the Western honey bee, as the model organism. Honey bees live in a complex society governed by an age-related division of labor, with each individual assuming many roles during her lifetime. Both genetic heredity and environmental conditions determine what role a bee performs, and when she performs it. The biology research will generate a unique database of gene expressions for all social behavior, recording brain gene expression for hundreds of individuals, each with a specific societal role. These microarray experiments utilize the recently sequenced genome, supported by state-of-the-art statistics. The informatics research will develop an interactive environment to analyze all information sources relevant to bee social behavior. These include genome databases from honey bee and related organisms, linked to complete scientific literature relevant to insect behavior. New text mining technology will integrate molecular description with information from physiology, behavior, neuroscience, and evolution. The BeeSpace environment will enable users to navigate a uniform space of diverse databases and literature sources for hypothesis development and testing. The software system will go beyond a searchable database, using statistical literature analyses to discover functional relationships between genes and behavior. This research will enable all scientists who study bee genes to live on the frontier of integrative biology, where biotechnology enables routine expression analysis and bioinformatics enables functional analysis unconstrained by pre-existing categories. The broader impact of the interactive environment for functional analysis will be tested in an international community of laboratories studying honey bees and related organisms. Outreach for BeeSpace will provide integrated research and education experiences at the graduate and undergraduate levels, plus training courses and minority outreach at high school and middle school levels.