Integration and modularity in grass diversification

草多样化的整合和模块化

• 批准号: 1929514
• 负责人: Elizabeth Kellogg
• 金额: $ 84.31万
• 依托单位: Donald Danforth Plant Science Center
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2019
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2019-09-15 至 2024-08-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1929514&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Integration; modularity; grass; diversification

The tallgrass prairie is an iconic American landscape dominated by a single group of grasses known as the Andropogoneae, which is responsible for much of the plant productivity world-wide. This group also characterizes the vast tropical grasslands of central Africa and Brazil and contains many economically important crop species, such as corn and sorghum. However, how this group came to dominate these habitats and diversify into approximately 1200 species is unknown. Species within the group have a range of floral architectures, which suggests that the evolution and diversification of this group may be influenced by the function of its reproductive structures. This project will test this hypothesis using comparative morphological and functional analyses of these reproductive structures in the context of the phylogeny of the Andropogoneae. The research plan incorporates a range of training opportunities for early-career researchers, including members of underrepresented groups, and methods for disseminating the results. Outcomes of the research will reveal how morphological development and natural selection have interacted over evolutionary history for this tribe of grasses and will provide agronomists with new insights for improving the productivity of its grain crops. Researchers will test whether shifts in the integration and modularity of reproductive structures correlate with diversification in the Andropogoneae using three integrated aims that assess the phylogenetic, morphological, and functional consequences of these changes. They will produce a near-complete species-level phylogeny of Andropogoneae by leveraging extensive nuclear genome sequence data already in hand. Morphometric data for spikelets and spikelet pairs from all species will be captured using semi-automated tools and will be analyzed to assess the covariance between spikelet and spikelet pair structures (integration) and the morphometric distances between them (disparity and modularity). Integration, disparity, and modularity will then be mapped on the phylogeny, as will the underlying morphological characters, to be correlated with patterns of diversification. Experiments will test the performance of the spikelets and spikelet pairs for pollination and seed dispersal to quantify the functional consequences of integration and modularity. In doing so, researchers will augment herbarium collections with new metadata and contribute to genomic data repositories that will facilitate future research on grass systematic biology and plant breeding. The contributions of the research will create an integrated evolutionary view at the genomic level of morphological and functional diversification in a group of plants that are central to grassland ecology and US agriculture.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.

高草草原是美国的标志性景观，以一种被称为“穿心草亚科”的草类为主，全世界大部分植物生产力都由这种草类负责。该组还具有中非和巴西广阔的热带草原的特征，并且包含许多经济上重要的作物物种，例如玉米和高粱。然而，这个群体如何主宰这些栖息地并多样化为大约 1200 个物种尚不清楚。该类群内的物种具有一系列的花结构，这表明该类群的进化和多样化可能受到其生殖结构功能的影响。该项目将在 Andropogonae 的系统发育背景下，对这些生殖结构进行比较形态学和功能分析来检验这一假设。该研究计划包括为早期职业研究人员（包括代表性不足群体的成员）提供一系列培训机会以及传播结果的方法。研究结果将揭示形态发育和自然选择在这一草类部落的进化史上如何相互作用，并将为农学家提供提高粮食作物生产力的新见解。 研究人员将使用评估这些变化的系统发育、形态和功能后果的三个综合目标来测试生殖结构的整合和模块化的变化是否与穿心植物的多样化相关。他们将利用现有的大量核基因组序列数据，产生近乎完整的穿心莲亚科物种水平系统发育。所有物种的小穗和小穗对的形态测量数据将使用半自动化工具捕获，并进行分析以评估小穗和小穗对结构之间的协方差（整合）以及它们之间的形态测量距离（差异和模块化）。然后，整合、差异和模块化将被映射到系统发育上，潜在的形态特征也将被映射到系统发育上，从而与多样化模式相关联。实验将测试小穗和小穗对在授粉和种子传播方面的性能，以量化集成和模块化的功能后果。在此过程中，研究人员将利用新的元数据来扩充植物标本馆收藏，并为基因组数据存储库做出贡献，这将促进未来草系统生物学和植物育种的研究。该研究的贡献将在对草原生态和美国农业至关重要的一组植物的形态和功能多样化的基因组水平上创建一个综合进化观点。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。