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，它进一步加深了我们对自然世界的理解，并影响了人类的健康和福祉。现代农业是以选择作为改良作物的一种方法为基础的。此外，了解自然选择如何运作有助于处理新出现的疾病和抗生素耐药性。这个项目研究了一个事实，即自然选择的强度和方向在一个物种的雄性和雌性之间通常是不同的。这种选择的结果取决于雄性和雌性是否表达相同的基因。研究小组将利用野外研究、基因组分析和草本开花植物Silene latifolia的统计建模来探索雄性和雌性的选择。这种植物是这项研究的理想模型，因为大量的前期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。对公众的推广将包括一个涉及堪萨斯州高中生的基因研究项目，以及在印第安纳州一个社区级科学节上的花卉示范。研究小组将收集来自弗吉尼亚州的美洲藜种群中所有个体的表型和适应度测量，然后在基因组中的单核苷酸多态性（snp）中询问这些个体及其后代。表型、基因型和适应性数据的结合将使研究人员能够确定选择是否在个体基因座的规模上是明显的，以及雄性和雌性之间是否存在差异。这个物种有异型性染色体（雄性是XY型），全基因组的选择特征将使预测的选择在常染色体和性染色体之间应该不同的测试成为可能。虽然有大量的工作测量植物种群的自然选择，但这个实验将为选择中一个典型的隐藏成分提供前所未有的细节，即雄性植物在繁殖中的差异成功。最后，该项目将允许本科生和研究生参与并学习现场技术，实验室方法和生物信息学。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值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.