A quantitative analysis of phenotype in a multicellular prokaryote

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An award is made to Syracuse University to undertake a critical step in understanding how a genome encodes an organism's three-dimensional structure. Revealing how each gene in a genome impacts the structure and function of an organism, i.e., "the genotype to phenotype problem" is challenging. Even the simplest organisms self-assemble through fragile, complex, and often poorly understood processes involving many different genes. In this context, the impact of a mutation to any single gene is often too subtle, or too entwined with the function of other genes, to be determined by direct observation. This project will achieve a critical step in overcoming this challenge by constructing a large and well-characterized mutant strain collection based on the genome of Myxococcus xanthus, an organism used to study three dimensional multi-cellular structures. The research will also develop experimental protocols to assign quantitative phenotype profiles that elucidate subtle functional changes linked to each gene, resulting in more accurate and thorough quantification of phenotype in the context of the entire genome, and a genome-scale data set related to function. In addition to providing a platform for training graduate students, all the strains and data will be made available for education purposes at the undergraduate level. These data will also become integral tools for students in an ongoing upper- division bioinformatics course at Syracuse University, and distributed to faculty from primarily undergraduate institutions to develop similar curricula for their students. In addition, the PI is engaging with local high school teachers to bring these data into their classrooms as an introduction to the genotype-to-phenotype problem and opportunities in life science in the post-genomic era. Information on this project can be found at: www.welchlab.org