CAREER: Establishement and Maintenance of an Environmentally-Acquired Symbiosis

职业：建立和维持环境共生关系

• 批准号: 1149829
• 负责人: Nicole Gerardo
• 金额: $ 80万
• 依托单位: Emory University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Continuing Grant
• 财政年份: 2012
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2012-07-01 至 2018-06-30
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1149829&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: CAREER; Establishement; Maintenance; Environmentally; Acquired

Most animals, including humans, have specific associations with beneficial bacteria that facilitate digestion or provide defense against harmful pathogens and parasites. While some animals pass these bacteria directly from mother to offspring, ensuring acquisition, other animals are born bacteria-free and then must acquire these beneficial partners from the environment. Little is understood about the process by which organisms establish and maintain these specialized associations in the face of encountering millions of diverse environmental microbes. Here, researchers use the relationship between broad-headed bugs and Burkholderia bacteria to study the ecological, immunological and evolutionary forces that shape host-microbe specialization. The project will couple environmental sampling, molecular approaches and experimentation to explore what benefits the bacteria provide to the host, what bacterial genes facilitate establishment within the host, and how the host responds to the introduction of alternative bacteria. This comprehensive approach will provide insight into how both host and microbial properties shape the establishment and maintenance of animal-bacteria associations. The project will train undergraduate and graduate students as well as one postdoctoral fellow. The researchers will also work with visual arts and biology instructors at both the undergraduate and middle-school levels to bring science into the art classroom, facilitating exploration of how art can be used to expose students to science.

包括人类在内的大多数动物都与有益细菌有特定的联系，这些有益细菌有助于消化或提供对有害病原体和寄生虫的防御。虽然有些动物将这些细菌直接从母亲传给后代，确保获得，但其他动物出生时没有细菌，然后必须从环境中获得这些有益的伴侣。生物体在面对数百万不同的环境微生物时，是如何建立和维持这些专门的联系的，人们对此知之甚少。在这里，研究人员利用宽头虫和伯克霍尔德菌之间的关系来研究形成宿主微生物专业化的生态，免疫和进化力量。该项目将结合环境采样，分子方法和实验来探索细菌为宿主提供了什么好处，什么细菌基因促进了宿主内的建立，以及宿主如何对替代细菌的引入做出反应。这种全面的方法将提供深入了解宿主和微生物特性如何塑造动物-细菌协会的建立和维持。该项目将培训本科生和研究生以及一名博士后研究员。研究人员还将与本科和中学的视觉艺术和生物教师合作，将科学带入艺术课堂，促进探索如何利用艺术让学生接触科学。