The Physiological Basis of Allometry

它们身体部位的形状和大小是识别和定义不同物种动物的最重要特征。然而，身体各部分的形状和相对大小在发育过程中不断变化。因此，具有不同最终成年身体尺寸的个体通常在其身体部位的尺寸比例上不同。这种现象称为异速生长。尽管异速生长已经被广泛描述和研究了世纪，但这些研究主要是描述性的，并对不同的身体部位如何生长做出了简单而不切实际的假设。这部分是因为负责产生异速生长的生理过程仍然知之甚少，因为用于分析和解释异速生长的理论工具不能正确地推断生长过程。 因此，控制大小、形状和身体各部分相对大小的机制仍然是生物学中未解决的重大难题之一。拟议的工作将开发新的实践和理论工具，用于分析身体部位的相对大小如何以及为什么变化。了解器官如何生长到正确的大小和形状，对于理解正常发育和发育异常的原因和机制具有深远的意义。 将开发和免费分发用户友好的软件，使学生和研究人员能够实现本研究中开发的方程，并以新颖和更富有成效的方式分析异速生长。本项目将为一名研究生和一组不同的本科生提供生物数学和生理学方面的跨学科培训。与当地学校和区域科学博物馆进行外联，举办昆虫生物学讲座和动手练习，让服务水平低下学校的初中生参观实验室，并继续参与和指导北卡罗来纳州生命与科学博物馆的昆虫生物学研究，是首席研究员致力于传播科学并使NSF提供的资源更广泛地提供给公众的重要组成部分本研究有三个主要目的：（1）发展一种改进的理论和新的静态异速生长方程，（2）用昆虫和哺乳动物丰富多样的数据集测试和验证该理论，（3）研究引起异速生长关系的生理因素。实验工作将集中在鳞翅目昆虫的翅-体异速生长，其中对生长和大小的控制是最好的理解。生长和大小由发育激素和激素分泌的时间和持续时间控制。这项工作将使用几种不同体型的Manduca sexta遗传菌株，这些菌株可以在不同的温度和营养环境条件下饲养，这也会影响体型和异速生长。这将产生一个丰富的数据集，将允许基因和环境对生长模式和由此产生的异速生长的影响的功能解释。这项工作的结果将使研究人员能够分析复杂的非线性异速生长的原因，并推导出引起这些异速生长的潜在生长模式。这项工作也将提供新的见解的生理机制，遗传背景和环境的变化改变大小，形状和异速生长。

The shapes and sizes of their body parts are the most important features by which different species of animals are recognized and defined. The shapes and relative sizes of body parts, however, change continually during development. As a result, individuals with different final adult body sizes typically differ in the proportions of sizes of their body parts. This phenomenon is called allometry. Although allometry has been extensively described and studied for more than a century, those studies have been largely descriptive and have made simple and unrealistic assumptions about how different body parts grow. This is in part because the physiological processes responsible for producing allometries are still poorly understood and because the theoretical tools used to analyze and interpret allometries cannot deduce growth processes correctly. As a result, the mechanisms that control size, shape and the relative sizes of body parts remain among the great unsolved puzzles in Biology. The proposed work will develop new practical and theoretical tools for the analysis of how, and why, the relative sizes of body parts vary. Understanding how organs grow to their correct size and shape has profound implications for understanding the causes and mechanisms of normal development and of developmental abnormalities. User-friendly software will be developed and freely distributed that will allow students and researchers to implement the equations developed in this research and analyze allometries in novel and more productive ways. This project will provide interdisciplinary training in biological mathematics and physiology for a graduate student and a diverse group of undergraduates. Outreach to local schools and regional science museums, with talks and hands-on exercises on insect biology, laboratory visits by junior-high school students from underserved schools, and continuing participation and mentorship with the North Carolina Museum of Life and Science on the biology of insects are integral parts of the Principal Investigator's commitment to disseminating science and making the resources provided by NSF more broadly available to the local community.The proposed research has three principal aims: (1) to develop an improved theory and new equations for static allometry, (2) to test and validate the theory against rich and diverse data sets from insects and mammals, and (3) to investigate the physiological factors that give rise to allometric relationships. The experimental work will focus on wing-body allometry in Lepidoptera, where the control of growth and size is best understood. Growth and size are controlled by developmental hormones and by the timing and duration of hormone secretion. This work will use several genetic strains of Manduca sexta that differ in body size and that can be reared under different environmental conditions of temperature and nutrition, which also affect size and allometry. This will produce a rich data set that will permit a functional interpretation of the effects of genes and environment on growth patterns and on the resulting allometries. The results of this work will allow researchers to analyze the causes of complex non-linear allometries, and deduce the underlying growth patterns that give rise to those allometries. This work will also provide new insights into the physiological mechanisms by which variation in genetic background and environment alters size, shape and allometry.