NSF Postdoctoral Fellowship in Biology FY 2021: Ecological and genetic structuring of a pathogen microbiome and its effect on virulence

该行动资助了2021财年的NSF生物学博士后研究奖学金，即调查基因组，环境和表型之间相互作用的生命规则的综合研究。该研究金支持研究员的研究和培训，以创新的方式为生活规则领域做出贡献。感染性真菌病原体能够宿主自己的微生物，这些微生物可以影响真菌与植物和动物之间的关系。该项目的目标是制定一般规则，以更好地了解这些微生物与其致病宿主之间的关系，以及这些关系如何演变。这些目标与病原体对人类、农业和生物多样性构成的威胁有关。该研究员将参加一系列活动，旨在突出基本发现如何为广大受众提供应用研究。该研究员将为推广人员和农业利益攸关方举办一系列研讨会，重点介绍作物害虫和病原体生命周期对作物管理战略的影响。此外，该研究员将使用蚜虫，真菌病原体和其他微生物为TN农村服务不足的学校的小学生实施互动课程。这些课程将让学生了解微生物对人类生活的有益影响。真菌病原体新蚜虫潘多拉是蚜虫的重要天然微生物敌人。拟议的工作将这种病原体开发为一个易于处理的系统，用于研究微生物组对宿主-病原体相互作用的影响。病原菌的微生物组的内共生细菌的假设解释豌豆蚜虫流行。该项目将测试从半自然地区收集的受感染蚜虫中的新蚜虫疫霉内共生体多样性是否概括了病原体遗传多样性或生态因素。该研究员将使用宏基因组学来确定各种内共生体分类群的功能能力，目的是测试新蚜虫丙酸杆菌内共生体是否与菌株之间的毒力差异相关。这项工作将拓宽对生态学和进化如何塑造病原体与微生物关联的理解。蚜虫是入侵性农业害虫，真菌病原体被用作蚜虫种群的生物控制。了解农业害虫如何抵抗生物防治剂在害虫综合管理中至关重要。该奖项反映了NSF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 2021, 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. Infectious fungal pathogens are capable of hosting their own microbes, and these microbes can affect the relationship between the fungus and the plants and animals. The project goals are to develop general rules to better understand the relationship between these microbes and their pathogenic hosts, and how these relationships evolve. These goals are relevant to threats that pathogens pose to humans, agriculture, and biodiversity. The fellow will engage in a series of activities designed to highlight how basic discovery informs applied research for a broad audience. The fellow will hold a series of seminars for extension agents and agricultural stakeholders, highlighting the impacts of crop pest and pathogen life cycle on crop management strategies. Further, the fellow will implement interactive lessons for elementary students in underserved schools in rural TN, using aphids, fungal pathogens, and other microbes. These lessons will expose students to beneficial impacts of microbes on human life.The fungal pathogen Pandora neoaphidis is an important natural microbial enemy of aphids. The proposed work develops this pathogen as a tractable system for studying microbiome effects on host-pathogen interactions. The pathogen’s microbiome of endosymbiotic bacteria is hypothesized to explain pea aphid epidemics. The project will test whether endosymbiont diversity in P. neoaphidis from infected aphids collected from semi-natural areas recapitulates pathogen genetic diversity or ecological factors. The fellow will use metagenomics to determine the functional capacity of various endosymbiont taxa, with the goal of testing if P. neoaphidis endosymbionts correlate with difference in virulence among strains. This work will broaden understanding of how ecology and evolution shape pathogen associations with microbes. Aphids are invasive agricultural pests, and fungal pathogens are used as a biological control of aphid populations. Developing an understanding of how agricultural pests resist biocontrol agents is critical in integrated pest management.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.