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

该行动资助了NSF 2020财年生物学博士后研究奖学金，研究基因组，环境和表型之间相互作用的生命规则的综合研究。该奖学金支持将以创新方式对生活规则领域作出贡献的研究员的研究和培训。越来越清楚的是，栖息在人类肠道中的微生物（即微生物组）在人类健康中发挥着重要作用。然而，微生物群不是静态的。相反，微生物组内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该研究员能够描述人类微生物组的关键进化特征，并研究这些特征如何影响人类肠道的物种组成，这些问题对人类健康有影响。由于进化过程的知识对于理解自然世界至关重要，该研究员将致力于通过以微生物群为中心的外展活动，帮助公众接受进化。该项目将主要集中于推断人类微生物组中种群的适应度效应（DFE）分布，这是确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，研究人员将从等位基因频率之间的相关性中提取信息，这种相关性是由于等位基因位于同一染色体上而产生的。利用种群遗传理论和进化动力学的计算模拟，可以推断出DFE的程度并结合相关关系。将使用公开的微生物组宏基因组数据集评估不同物种间DFE形状的变化，以及该形状依赖于物种组成的程度。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，参加和开发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，指导本科生和研究生，并与一系列科学学科的研究人员合作。拓展工作将包括将进化和微生物组纳入加州大学洛杉矶分校的零费用教育项目，给预科学家的信，和Skype的科学家。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。

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.