NSF Postdoctoral Fellowship in Biology FY 2020: Ecological and Evolutionary Interactions in a Dynamic Microbial System

这一行动为NSF 2020财年生物学博士后研究奖学金提供了资金，综合研究调查了基因组、环境和表型之间相互作用的生命规则。该奖学金支持研究员的研究和培训，这些研究员将以创新的方式为生活规则领域做出贡献。越来越清楚的是，生活在人类肠道中的微生物(即微生物群)在人类健康中发挥着重要作用。然而，微生物群并不是静止的。相反，微生物组中的物种继续获得新的突变，并在与人类健康相关的时间尺度上进化。该奖项提供的支持将使这位研究员能够描述人类微生物群的关键进化特征，并研究这些特征如何影响人类肠道的物种组成，以及对人类健康具有影响的问题。由于进化过程的知识对于理解自然界是必不可少的，该研究员将致力于通过以微生物群为中心的外联活动来帮助公众拥抱进化。这个项目将主要专注于推断种群在人类微生物群中的适应效应(DFE)分布，这是决定进化过程的关键参数。为了推断DFE并检查其进化和生态后果，该研究员将开发可应用于经验数据的计算和统计工具。首先，研究员将确定仅使用微生物种群中等位基因频率分布中包含的信息来推断DFE的程度。然后，这位研究员将致力于整合来自等位基因频率之间的相关性的信息，这些频率是由于等位基因在同一染色体上而产生的。可以推断DFE的程度和纳入的相关性将使用种群遗传学理论和进化动力学的计算模拟来证实。将使用公开可用的微生物组元基因组数据集来评估DFE形状在不同物种之间的变化以及该形状对物种组成的依赖程度。在加州大学洛杉矶分校，该研究员将接受教育和职业发展培训，重点是数据科学和管理，参加和发展加州大学洛杉矶分校定量和计算生物科学研究所的研讨会，本科生和研究生指导，以及与一系列科学学科的研究人员合作。推广工作将包括将进化论和微生物群纳入加州大学洛杉矶分校的零费用教育项目，给前科学家的信，以及Skype a Science。这一奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

This action funds an NSF Postdoctoral Research Fellowship in Biology for FY 2020, Integrative Research Investigating the Rules of Life Governing Interactions Between Genomes, Environment and Phenotypes. The fellowship supports research and training of the fellow that will contribute to the area of Rules of Life in innovative ways. It is increasingly clear that the microscopic organisms that inhabit the human gut (i.e., the microbiome) play a major role in human health. However, the microbiome is not static. Rather, species within the microbiome continue to acquire new mutations and evolve on a timescale that is relevant for human health. This award provides support that will enable the fellow to characterize key evolutionary features of the human microbiome and examine how these features affect the species composition of the human gut, questions that have implications for human health. Because knowledge of evolutionary processes is essential to understand the natural world, the fellow will work to help the public embrace evolution through outreach activities that center the microbiome.This project will primarily focus on inferring the distribution of fitness effects (DFE) of populations in the human microbiome, a key parameter for determining the course of evolution. To infer the DFE and examine its evolutionary and ecological consequences, the fellow will develop computational and statistical tools that can be applied to empirical data. First, the fellow will determine the degree that the DFE can be inferred solely using information contained in the distribution of allele frequencies within microbial populations. The fellow will then work to incorporate information from correlations between allele frequencies that arise as a result of alleles being on the same chromosome. The degree the DFE can be inferred and correlations incorporated will be ground-truthed using population genetic theory and computational simulations of evolutionary dynamics. Variation in the shape of the DFE across species as well as the degree that the shape depends on species composition will be assessed using publicly available microbiome metagenomic datasets. At UCLA, the fellow will receive educational and career development training, focusing on data science and management, participating in and developing workshops at the UCLA Institute for Quantitative and Computational Biosciences, undergraduate and graduate student mentoring, and collaborating with researchers across a range of scientific disciplines. Outreach efforts will consist of incorporating evolution and the microbiome into zero-fee educational programs at UCLA, Letters to a Pre-Scientist, and Skype a Scientist.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.