Collaborative Research: Ecological and evolutionary impacts of disrupted transmission on host-microbiome associations

生活在生物体内或生物体上的微生物组对该生物体的健康至关重要。它影响着从生长发育到行为再到疾病易感性的一切。生物体在发育过程中如何获得最佳的微生物组是其终身健康和生殖成功的关键。然而，我们对微生物组在个体之间传播的过程如何影响生物体健康知之甚少。在预测个体之间的微生物转移如何受到干扰时，这种知识差距变得尤为重要。例如，有人讨论了剖腹产如何减少微生物群从母亲到后代的传播，在农业中有许多常见的做法，如种子消毒或作物轮作，这可能会影响与植物相关的微生物在几代人之间的移动。该研究项目将重点关注西红柿（一种模式农作物）如何获得其微生物组的差异的后果。它将比较从父母到后代的垂直传播或不相关生物体之间的水平传播如何影响微生物组的建立，适应和功能。这项工作的成果将与农业实践的发展有关，这些实践更好地结合了植物微生物组对作物产量的潜在有用作用。来自代表性不足群体的本科生也将参与该项目，研究人员还将与当地教师合作，根据研究成果编写教材。拟议的工作使用模型番茄植物叶圈（叶相关）微生物组系统来确定宿主微生物组相互作用的世代之间中断的微生物组传输的短期（生态）和长期（进化）后果。通过操纵幼苗被来自亲本植物与无关植物的微生物群定殖的可能性，这项工作将直接测试传播模式对微生物群演替动态、适应和功能的影响。微生物实验进化、非培养物测序和宏基因组分析的结合将允许在微生物组传播模式与叶际微生物群的分类和功能多样性之间建立因果联系。经验工作将得到关于垂直微生物组传播如何影响宿主微生物组共同进化的理论的补充。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并被认为值得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来支持。

The microbiome living in or on an organism is critical to that organism's health. It influences everything from growth and development to behavior to disease susceptibility. How an organism gets the best possible microbiome during its development is key to its lifetime health and reproductive success. However, we know very little about how the processes by which microbiomes are transmitted among individuals affects organism health. This knowledge gap becomes especially important when building predictions about how interfering in the transfer of microbes between individuals might matter. For example, there has been discussion of how caesarean section birth might reduce the transmission of microbiota from mother to offspring, and in agriculture there are numerous common practices, such as sterilization of seeds or crop rotation, that likely impact the movement of plant-associated microbes across generations. This research project will focus on the consequences of differences in how tomatoes, a model agricultural crop, get their microbiomes. It will compare how vertical transmission, from parent to offspring, or horizontal transmission, among unrelated organisms, affects microbiome establishment, adaptation, and function. The outcomes of this work will be relevant to the development of agricultural practices that better incorporate the potentially useful role of the plant microbiome for crop yield. Undergraduate students from underrepresented groups will also be involved in the project, and researchers will also work with local teachers to create teaching materials based on the research. The proposed work uses a model tomato plant - phyllosphere (leaf associated) microbiome system to determine both the short term (ecological) and longer-term (evolutionary) consequences of interrupted microbiome transmission between generations on host-microbiome interactions. By manipulating the likelihood that seedlings will be colonized by microbiota coming from parental plants versus unrelated plants, the work will directly test the impact of transmission mode on microbiome successional dynamics, adaptation, and function. The combination of microbial experimental evolution, culture-independent sequencing, and metagenomic analyses will allow for a causal link to be established between microbiome transmission mode and the taxonomic and functional diversity of phyllosphere microbiota. The empirical work will be complemented by theory on how vertical microbiome transmission affects host-microbiome coevolution. Together, the work will determine the importance of vertical transmission in shaping host-microbiome interactions.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.