NSF Postdoctoral Fellowship in Biology FY 2019: Fluctuating Selection in Barley Driven by Biotic and Abiotic Factors

2019 财年 NSF 生物学博士后奖学金：生物和非生物因素驱动的大麦波动选择

• 批准号: 1907061
• 负责人: Keely Brown
• 金额: $ 21.6万
• 依托单位: Brown, Keely E
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Fellowship Award
• 财政年份: 2019
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2019-07-01 至 2023-06-30
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1907061&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: NSF; Postdoctoral; Fellowship; Biology; FY

This action funds an NSF National Plant Genome Initiative Postdoctoral Research Fellowship in Biology for FY 2019. The fellowship supports a research and training plan in a host laboratory for the Fellow who also presents a plan to broaden participation in biology. The title of the research and training plan for this fellowship to Keely Elizabeth Brown is "Fluctuating Selection in Barley Driven by Biotic and Abiotic Factors". The host institution for the fellowship is the University of California, Riverside and the sponsoring scientist is Dr. Daniel Koenig.Barley is the fourth most highly produced grain in the world and is a staple crop across many varied environments, from the mountains of Nepal to lowland regions in Northern Africa. Barley yield is expected to be dramatically impacted by climate change, potentially resulting not only in food shortages across the world, but in higher cost of luxury goods like health products and malt in more developed countries. This project aims to better understand how barley responds on a genetic level to changes in the environment by using seed from an ongoing experimental evolution study that began in 1929. The fellow will use historical weather data to identify patterns of evolution that will help us to predict how well a plant will do in a particular environment, given its genetic makeup. The broader impacts of the project include providing basic research training for undergraduates from diverse backgrounds and engaging the public in scientific discussions about climate change in casual community outreach settings. Training objectives include acquiring expertise in genomics and bioinformatic analysis of large genomic data sets and training in agriculturally-relevant research. How genetic variation is maintained in crop plants is a question of great intellectual and practical importance. This project will focus on temporal environmental fluctuations as a mechanism to maintain variation in barley (Hordeum vulgare, Poaceae). The project will address this question by leveraging a set of parallel evolution experiments using a collection of barley Composite Cross lines (CCs). Initiated in 1929, these experiments and the resulting datasets provides a one-of-a-kind opportunity to link phenotype to genotype under a wide variety of environmental conditions. Using existing genomic datasets, the Fellow will map genes that maintain unusually high levels of genetic diversity in different climates (e.g., that in Montana versus California), and also how yearly environmental variability drives the retention of genetic diversity. The project will also consider temporal fluctuations in both abiotic environmental factors like temperature or rainfall and biotic factors like varying pressure from the fungal pathogen Rhynchosporium secalis, which causes barley scald. The analysis will exploit the key feature of the CC populations, replication, to identify environmental drivers of allele frequency change during local adaptation. Sequencing data from this project will be archived and publicly available through the National Center for Biotechnology Information Short Read Archive (NCBI SRA). Python or R code used for analysis will be made available through Github, and phenotype data will be archived in a public repository like Dryad.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.

该行动资助了 2019 财年 NSF 国家植物基因组计划生物学博士后研究奖学金。该奖学金支持该研究员在主办实验室的研究和培训计划，该研究员还提出了一项扩大生物学参与的计划。 Keely Elizabeth Brown 的研究和培训计划的标题是“生物和非生物因素驱动的大麦波动选择”。该奖学金的主办机构是加州大学河滨分校，赞助科学家是 Daniel Koenig 博士。大麦是世界上产量第四高的谷物，是从尼泊尔山区到北非低地地区的许多不同环境的主要作物。预计大麦产量将受到气候变化的巨大影响，不仅可能导致世界各地的粮食短缺，而且还会导致较发达国家保健品和麦芽等奢侈品的成本上涨。该项目旨在通过使用 1929 年开始的正在进行的实验进化研究的种子，更好地了解大麦如何在基因水平上对环境变化做出反应。该研究员将使用历史天气数据来识别进化模式，这将帮助我们预测植物在特定环境中的表现，考虑到其基因构成。该项目更广泛的影响包括为来自不同背景的本科生提供基础研究培训，并让公众在休闲社区外展环境中参与有关气候变化的科学讨论。培训目标包括获得基因组学和大型基因组数据集生物信息分析方面的专业知识以及农业相关研究的培训。 如何在农作物中维持遗传变异是一个具有重大学术和实践意义的问题。该项目将重点关注时间环境波动作为维持大麦（大麦、禾本科）变异的机制。该项目将通过利用一组大麦复合交叉系（CC）的一组平行进化实验来解决这个问题。这些实验和由此产生的数据集于 1929 年启动，为在各种环境条件下将表型与基因型联系起来提供了独一无二的机会。使用现有的基因组数据集，该研究员将绘制在不同气候（例如蒙大拿州与加利福尼亚州）下保持异常高水平遗传多样性的基因，以及每年的环境变化如何驱动遗传多样性的保留。该项目还将考虑非生物环境因素（如温度或降雨量）和生物因素（如导致大麦烫伤的真菌病原体黑斑病菌的压力变化）的时间波动。该分析将利用 CC 群体的关键特征（复制）来确定局部适应过程中等位基因频率变化的环境驱动因素。该项目的测序数据将通过国家生物技术信息短读档案中心 (NCBI SRA) 存档并公开提供。用于分析的 Python 或 R 代码将通过 Github 提供，表型数据将存档在像 Dryad 这样的公共存储库中。该奖项反映了 NSF 的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。