Collaborative Research: Within-host Microbial Communities: Experimentally Scaling Interaction Dynamics Across Sites, Regions, and Continents

合作研究：宿主微生物群落内：实验性地扩展跨地点、区域和大陆的相互作用动态

基本信息

批准号：
1241895
负责人：
Elizabeth Borer
金额：
$ 150万
依托单位：
University of Minnesota-Twin Cities
依托单位国家：
美国
项目类别：
Standard Grant
财政年份：
2013
资助国家：
美国
起止时间：
2013-03-01 至 2019-09-30
项目状态：
已结题

来源：
https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1241895&HistoricalAwards=false
关键词：
Collaborative Research Within host Microbial

项目摘要

The fungal, bacterial, and viral microbial communities embedded within organisms are extremely diverse and encode the vast majority of genes in the biosphere. For example, microbes in a human account for 100 times more genes than those of their host; similar results are emerging for virtually all free-living organisms. Disease is the best studied host-microbe interaction, but microbes inside hosts also are responsible for critical functions such as disease resistance as well as nutrient uptake and defense against herbivores (plants), and digestion and reduced inflammatory responses (animals). Yet, in spite of the tremendous diversity and importance of microbes to free-living organisms, there is no predictive understanding of the factors controlling within-host microbial community composition or the spatial scales at which environmental changes affect host and microbial community interactions and functions. Even as human activities lead to increased nitrogen and phosphorus inputs and increased rates of species invasions and extinctions, impacting biological systems at scales ranging from individuals to continents, we know little of the effects of these changes on microbial communities within hosts. This award will provide the first systematic understanding of the responses of plant microbial communities to these pervasive environmental changes on a global scale and provide critically important information on the potential role of microbes in plant productivity, knowledge necessary for feeding a growing human population (9 billion by 2050). This award provides funds to use experiments of unprecedented scale to examine the environmental factors controlling a plant host's fungal, bacterial, and viral microbes at scales ranging from individual plants to regional and global bioclimatic and soil gradients. Using quantitative models to examine multi-scale empirical data, the project team's work will answer three questions. 1) What factors most strongly control microbial communities within hosts across global, continental, regional, and local scales? 2) How does the within-host microbial community affect host reproduction and susceptibility to disease-causing microbes? And 3) how do the symbiotic microbial communities within a host affect the growth, competitive ability, and successful transmission of microbes? The research will encompass replicated experiments in 30 grasslands spanning six continents, representing globally-relevant variation in soil nutrients. Concurrent collection of data from locally common grass hosts as well as a planted crop host (barley) within experimental nutrient and herbivory treatments will be used to discern the effects of symbiotic microbes on plant host health and to distinguish these from other large-scale factors such as climate and the specific microbes found in each location. High-throughput sequencing will be used to determine variation in within-host microbial communities at scales ranging from meters to continents. Manipulative experiments and data modeling will clarify the effect of microbial communities on host reproduction, resistance to microbial disease, and the spread of microbes and disease. Broader Impacts: Grassland communities cover 30% of Earth's ice-free surface, and occur across greatly varying climatic conditions. Grasslands are essential ecosystems that provide food and forage for domesticated and wild animal populations. In this research, grasslands provide an experimental system with which to understand the ecological processes driving microbial community composition and its effects on plant host growth and reproduction. Results of this work have great potential for refining medical and agricultural applications by illuminating the role of microbial communities in the health of their hosts, and the scales at which environment, space, and time most affect host-microbe interactions. Results may identify novel mechanisms of plant resistance to crop pathogens and will contribute significantly to existing microbial sequence databases linked to LTER and NEON sites and priorities. The research group will communicate this work to K-12 children, undergraduates, and the general public via collaborations with Cedar Creek LTER and the Bell Museum of Natural History. All microbial data and living culture collections will be made publicly available, further enhancing research infrastructure and providing a rich resource for further discovery. As always, the project PIs will prioritize involvement of underrepresented groups and disseminate results in peer-reviewed journals.

嵌入生物体中的真菌，细菌和病毒微生物群落非常多样化，并编码生物圈中的绝大多数基因。例如，人类中的微生物是其宿主的基因的100倍。几乎所有自由生活生物都出现了类似的结果。疾病是研究最佳的宿主微相互作用，但宿主内部的微生物也负责关键功能，例如抗病性以及养分和防御食草动物（植物），消化和减少炎症反应（动物）。然而，尽管微生物对自由生物的生物具有巨大的多样性和重要性，但对控制宿主微生物社区内部组成的因素或环境变化影响宿主和微生物群落相互作用和功能的空间量表没有预测的理解。即使人类的活动导致氮和磷的投入增加，物种入侵和灭绝的速率增加，从而影响了从个体到大陆的尺度上的生物系统，我们对这些变化对宿主中微生物群落的影响很少。该奖项将对植物微生物群落对这些普遍的环境变化的反应提供第一个系统的理解，并提供有关微生物在植物生产力中潜在作用的至关重要的信息，这是养活人口增长所必需的知识（到2050年）。该奖项为使用前所未有的规模实验提供了资金，以检查控制植物宿主的真菌，细菌和病毒微生物的环境因素，从单个植物到区域和全球生物气候和土壤梯度等等。使用定量模型检查多尺度的经验数据，项目团队的工作将回答三个问题。 1）哪些因素最强烈控制全球，大陆，区域和本地规模的宿主中的微生物群落？ 2）宿主内部微生物社区如何影响宿主的繁殖和对引起疾病的微生物的敏感性？ 3）宿主中的共生微生物群落如何影响微生物的增长，竞争能力和成功传播？这项研究将涵盖跨越六个大洲的30个草原的复制实验，代表土壤养分中与全球相关的变化。同时收集来自本地普通草宿主的数据以及实验性营养和草食治疗中种植的农作物宿主（大麦），将使用共生微生物对植物宿主健康的影响，并将其与其他大规模因素（如气候以及在每个位置中发现的特定微生物）区分开来。高通量测序将用于确定从仪表到大洲的尺度上宿主内部微生物社区的变化。操纵实验和数据建模将阐明微生物群落对宿主繁殖，对微生物疾病的抗性以及微生物和疾病的传播的影响。更广泛的影响：草原社区占地30％的无冰表面，并发生在大大不同的气候条件下。草原是必不可少的生态系统，可为驯养和野生动物种群提供食物和草料。在这项研究中，草原提供了一个实验系统，以了解驱动微生物群落组成的生态过程及其对植物宿主生长和繁殖的影响。这项工作的结果通过阐明微生物群落在其宿主健康中的作用以及环境，空间和时间最大的量表影响宿主 - 微生物相互作用的尺度，从而有很大的潜力来完善医学和农业应用。结果可能会确定植物对作物病原体的耐药性的新型机制，并将对与LTER和NEON位点以及优先级相关的现有微生物序列数据库产生重大贡献。研究小组将通过与Cedar Creek lter和Bell自然历史博物馆的合作，将此工作传达给K-12儿童，本科生和公众。所有微生物数据和生活文化收集都将公开可用，进一步增强了研究基础设施，并为进一步的发现提供了丰富的资源。与往常一样，PIS将优先考虑涉及代表性不足的群体，并将结果传播到同行评审期刊中。