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

生活在生物体内部或表面的微生物群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好的微生物群是其一生健康和繁殖成功的关键。然而，我们对微生物群在个体之间传播的过程如何影响有机体健康知之甚少。在预测干扰微生物在个体之间的转移可能产生的影响时，这种知识差距变得尤为重要。例如，人们一直在讨论剖腹产如何减少微生物群从母亲到后代的传播，而在农业中，有许多常见的做法，如种子消毒或作物轮作，可能会影响与植物相关的微生物在几代之间的运动。这个研究项目将集中在西红柿这种模范农作物如何获得微生物组的差异所带来的后果。它将比较垂直传播，从亲代到后代，或水平传播，在不相关的生物体之间，如何影响微生物组的建立，适应和功能。这项工作的结果将与农业实践的发展有关，这些实践将更好地结合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，根据这项研究编写教材。本研究使用一个番茄模型植物-叶圈（叶片相关）微生物组系统来确定微生物组代际传播中断对宿主-微生物组相互作用的短期（生态）和长期（进化）后果。通过控制来自亲本植物和非亲本植物的微生物群定植幼苗的可能性，该工作将直接测试传播模式对微生物群演替动力学、适应性和功能的影响。微生物实验进化、培养独立测序和宏基因组分析的结合将允许建立微生物组传播模式与层球微生物群的分类和功能多样性之间的因果关系。该实证工作将由关于垂直微生物群传播如何影响宿主-微生物群共同进化的理论进行补充。总之，这项工作将确定垂直传播在塑造宿主-微生物组相互作用中的重要性。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。

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.