NSF Postdoctoral Fellowship in Biology FY 2017: Visual Adaptation to Nocturnality in Birds

这是一个NSF博士后研究奖学金在生物学，根据程序研究使用生物收集。这位名叫Noor白色的研究员正在进行研究并接受培训，以创新的方式利用生物收集，并由两个主办机构的两名赞助科学家指导：Anand Swaroop（国家眼科研究所，美国国立卫生研究院）和Belinda Chang（多伦多大学）。 观察动物如何适应新的或不断变化的环境是理解我们周围世界的关键。这项研究调查了一个特别引人注目的转变，即一些鸟类已经从白天生活（或白天）转变为夜间生活（或夜间）环境。由于数量相对较少，夜行鸟比白天的鸟类有一个优势，因为夜间的食物竞争较少，捕食者也比白天少。然而，这一优势也带来了挑战，特别是如何在低光环境中看到的挑战。通过询问白天和夜间鸟类之间视觉所需的基因和蛋白质存在哪些变化，该项目将揭示鸟类如何发展夜视能力并适应新环境。与视觉有关的基因和蛋白质在脊椎动物中是保守的，因此该项目的结果将与包括人类在内的其他动物群体相关。这些数据将有助于社会了解视觉的工作原理，并将适用于人类视觉和视觉疾病（如色盲）的研究。这项研究将产生来自夜间和白天鸟类的视觉基因的基因组和蛋白质序列（通过视网膜转录组测序），其中包括所有夜间鸟类谱系。分子适应的功能意义将通过视蛋白的表达和直接测量其光谱灵敏度来确定。该研究员假设，鸟类生命树中向非变性的转变是独立的，因此，新的适应机制将与每个主要的转变相一致。该项目依靠全国各大博物馆的藏品，利用以前科学家的工作，精心收集和策划来自世界各地的鸟类。这位研究员有着悠久的公共宣传历史，并致力于在华盛顿的国家自然历史博物馆与公众分享她的工作。 这些研究的结果将发表在同行评审的期刊上，并在科学会议上发表。

This is an NSF Postdoctoral Research Fellowship in Biology, under the program Research Using Biological Collections. The fellow, Noor White, is conducting research and receiving training that utilizes biological collections in innovative ways, and is being mentored by two sponsoring scientists at two host institutions: Anand Swaroop (National Eye Institute, National Institutes of Health) and Belinda Chang (University of Toronto). Looking at the ways in which animals have adapted to novel or changing environments is key to understanding the world around us. This research investigates a particularly striking transition that some birds have undertaken the shift from a day-living (or diurnal) to a night-living (or nocturnal) environment. Being relatively rare in number, nocturnal birds have an advantage over diurnal birds in that there is less competition for food and fewer predators present at night than during the day. That advantage comes with challenges, however, and in particular the challenge of how to see in low-light environments. By asking what changes are present in the genes and proteins necessary for vision between diurnal and nocturnal birds, this project will uncover how birds have developed night vision, and adapted to a new environment. The genes and proteins involved in vision are conserved across vertebrates, and therefore the results of this project will be relevant to other animal groups, including humans. The data uncovered here will help society understand how vision works, and will be applicable and relevant to research on human vision and visual diseases, such as colorblindness.This research will generate genomic and protein (through retinal transcriptome sequencing) sequences of visual genes from both nocturnal and diurnal birds with all lineages of nocturnal birds represented. The functional significance of molecular adaptations will be identified by expression of opsin proteins and direct measurement of their spectral sensitivity. The fellow hypothesizes that the transitions to nocturnality across the avian tree of life were independent, and thus novel mechanisms of adaptation will be found coincident with each major transition. This project relies on collections housed at major museums across the country, taking advantage of the work of previous scientists to carefully collect and curate birds from around the world. The fellow has a long history of public outreach and is committed to sharing her work with the public at the National Museum of Natural History in Washington, DC. Results from these studies will be published in peer-reviewed journals and presented at scientific meetings.