Collaborative Research: Evolution of Systems Biology Underlying Fruiting Body Development in Fungi

真菌是农作物和人类的重要病原体，也是维持我们森林健康的有益根伙伴。大多数真菌缺乏主动移动的能力。相反，它们以菌丝的形式生长，然后通过风携带的孢子从一个地方传播到另一个地方。该项目比较和对比了在不同环境中茁壮成长的真菌子实体的发展，研究子实体结构如何适应各种环境。该项目将确定负责真菌子实体适应不同环境的基因。由此产生的子实体结构的理解将产生新的控制机制，减少致病孢子的生存和传播的基础科学。拟议的项目将超越基础科学研究的进步，通过建立一个成功的外展计划来造福社会，该计划支持纽约市和费城当地城市高中的真菌子实体培养的环境风险。此外，该项目还将为当地学生提供真菌生物学课程，以满足密歇根州三年级的标准，并为密歇根州立大学4H儿童花园提供课程。基因表达的变化是多细胞生物体中驱动组织分化和新形态进化的发育过程相互作用的基础。然而，这些相互作用的新兴特性如何导致新的，复杂的表型，阐明发展机制的进化过程的研究是具有挑战性的复杂生物体。子囊菌门中的真菌，包括许多重要的植物和动物病原体，为这些研究提供了模型系统，因为它们很容易操作，在普通培养基上发育出具有一些良好特征的组织类型的子实体结构，并且具有能够进行比较和功能分析的基因组资源。拟议的研究将使用比较转录谱分析和功能表征，再加上表型分析，以揭示真菌子实体几个关键形态的发育机制，并揭示这些形态创新在一组真菌中产生和分化的进化过程。本研究将揭示扩大后的6个属真菌子实体具有更大范围的与生态位适应相关的重要功能形态特征的遗传基础，并确定转录因子在两个模式种F. graminearum和N.粗鲁。作为真菌发育分化的第一个系统生物学分析，这项研究将提供一个有见地的比较，在微生物，植物和动物的发育系统的知名例子。通过研究这些不同的多细胞系统，我们可以更好地了解发育生物学的限制和潜力。

Fungi are important pathogens of agricultural crops and humans, as well as beneficial root associates maintaining the health of our forests. Most fungi lack the ability to actively move. Instead, they grow vegetatively as hyphae, then spread from one location to another using spores that are carried by the wind. This project compares and contrasts the development of fruiting bodies of fungi that thrive in different environments, examining how fruiting body structure has adapted to a variety of environments. The project will identify genes that are responsible for adaptation of fungal fruiting bodies to different environments. The resulting understanding of fruiting body structure will yield basic science for novel control mechanisms that curtail the survival and dispersal of pathogenic spores. The proposed project will reach beyond the advancement of fundamental scientific research to benefit society by building on a successful outreach program that supports an environmental venture of fungal fruiting body cultivation at local urban high schools in New York City and Philadelphia. In addition, the project will bring fungal biology curricula to local students, addressing the Michigan state third grade standards, and to the MSU 4H Children's Garden.Shifts in gene expression underlie the interaction of developmental processes that drive the differentiation of tissues and the evolution of new morphologies in multicellular organisms. However, studies of how emergent properties of these interactions lead to novel, complex phenotypes that elucidate the evolutionary processes of developmental mechanisms are challenging in complex organisms. Fungi in the Phylum Ascomycota, a group that includes numerous important plant and animal pathogens, provide model systems for these studies as they are easily manipulated, develop fruiting structures with a few well-characterized tissue types on common media, and have genomic resources that enable comparative and functional analyses. The proposed research will use comparative transcriptional profiling and functional characterization coupled with phenotypic analyses to reveal developmental mechanisms underlying several key morphologies of fungal fruiting bodies, and to reveal the evolutionary processes by which these morphological innovations arose and diverged across a set of fungi. The research will reveal the genetic basis of a greater scope of morphological features of functional importance, associated with niche adaptation, for fungal fruiting bodies in the expanded six genera, and identify the roles and interactions of transcription factors in the evolution of the fruiting body development in two model species, F. graminearum and N. crassa. As the first systems biological analysis of developmental divergence in fungi, this research will provide an insightful comparison to well-known examples of developmental systems in microbes, plants, and animals. By studying these diverse multicellular systems, we gain a better understanding of the constraints and potentialities that shape developmental biology.