SG: Collaborative Research: Measuring intra-locus conflict across the genome in a dioecious plant

理解自然选择是一个重要的科学目标，它促进了我们对自然界的理解，并影响到人类的健康和福利。现代农业的基础是采用选择作为改良作物的一种方法。此外，了解自然选择是如何运作的，有助于应对新出现的疾病和抗生素耐药性。这个项目调查了自然选择的强度和方向在一个物种的雄性和雌性之间经常不同的事实。这种选择的结果取决于男性和女性是否表达了相同的基因。研究小组将通过实地研究、基因组分析和统计建模，使用草本植物宽叶木来探索对雄性和雌性的选择。这种植物是这项研究的理想模型，因为之前的大量工作证明了雄性和雌性之间重要的表型和遗传差异。将向科学界介绍如何撰写科学文章和本研究中使用的基因组技术的研讨会。面向公众的推广活动将包括一个让堪萨斯州高中生参与基因研究的项目，以及在印第安纳州的一个社区级科学节上展示鲜花的项目。研究小组将收集弗吉尼亚州宽叶木兰种群中所有个体的表型和健康测量数据，然后通过基因组的单核苷酸多态(SNPs)对这些个体及其后代进行询问。表型、基因分型和适合度数据的结合将使研究人员能够确定在单个基因座的尺度上是否存在明显的选择，以及这种选择在男性和女性之间是否存在差异。该物种具有异形的性染色体(雄性为XY)，全基因组的选择特征将使预测在常染色体和性染色体之间的选择应该不同的预测得到检验。虽然有大量工作衡量植物种群的自然选择，但这项实验将提供关于选择的一个典型隐藏组成部分的前所未有的细节，即雄性植物在父本杂交中的不同成功。最后，该项目将允许本科生和研究生从事和学习现场技术、实验室方法论和生物信息学。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Understanding natural selection is an important scientific objective that furthers our understanding of the natural world and impacts human health and welfare. Modern agriculture is based on the adoption of selection as a method to improve crops. Furthermore, dealing with emerging diseases and antibiotic resistance is helped by understanding how natural selection operates. This project examines the fact that the strength and direction of natural selection routinely differs between males and females of a species. The consequence of this selection depends on whether the same genes are expressed in males and females. The research team will explore selection on males and females using field studies, genomic analyses, and statistical modeling using Silene latifolia, an herbaceous flowering plant. This plant is an ideal model for this research given extensive prior work demonstrating important phenotypic and genetic differences between males and females. Workshops to the scientific community will be presented on how to write scientific articles and the genomic techniques used in this study. Outreach to the general public will include a project involving high-school students in Kansas in genetic research, and a demonstration on flowers at a community-level science festival in Indiana.The research team will collect phenotypic and fitness measurements on all individuals within a S. latifolia population from Virginia, and then interrogate these individuals, and their progeny, at Single Nucleotide Polymorphisms (SNPs) across the genome. The combination of phenotypic, genotypic, and fitness data will allow the researchers to determine if selection is evident at the scale of individual loci and if it differs between males and females. This species has heteromorphic sex chromosomes (males are XY), and a genome-wide characterization of selection will enable a test of the prediction that selection should differ between autosomes and sex chromosomes. While there is a great body of work measuring natural selection in plant populations, this experiment will provide unprecedented detail on a typically hidden component of selection, the differential success of male plants in siring. Finally, the project will allow both undergraduate and graduate students to engage in and learn field techniques, laboratory methodology, and bioinformatics.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.