NSF Postdoctoral Fellowship in Biology FY 2021: Developmental Patterning of Double-Layered Epithelia and the Evolutionary Origin of Insect Wings

该行动资助2021财年美国国家科学基金会生物学博士后研究奖学金，扩大生物学中代表性不足群体的参与。该奖学金支持研究员的研究和培训计划，该计划将增加在生物学中代表性不足的群体的参与。研究员的研究目的是测试不同昆虫体内不同部位出现的相似结构是否使用了相似的发育指令。研究员将通过观察这些昆虫体内的基因表达来实现这一目标。这些结果与一个争论了数百年的问题有关：昆虫的翅膀是如何进化的？与蝙蝠和鸟类等会飞的脊椎动物不同，昆虫的翅膀不是肢体的简单衍生，而是一种没有明确进化历史的新特征。这个研究项目不仅能让这位残疾科学家获得新的技能，还能与一个培训生物学中代表性不足群体的本科生的项目相吻合。这批学生将在四个学期的积极学习社区课程中得到指导，他们将在一个支持性的环境中学习理论和实验室技能，然后在第四学期结束时轮转完成他们选择的独立研究。这将反过来为这些不同的学生和研究员在未来的生物研究领域取得成功做好准备。不同的结构被假设与昆虫的翅膀序列同源，从前叶，到腹鳍，到腿段。最近评估这些进化关系的努力依赖于从果蝇工作中鉴定出的翅膀基因，但这些基因尚未在由与翅膀相同的组织类型组成的其他特征上进行评估：双层上皮（DLE）。该研究员的工作将评估这些基因在由与翅膀没有序列同源的相同组织类型组成的结构中所起的作用。因此，研究员将测试关于翅膀起源的发育假设的假设，即共享使用该网络表明与翅膀具有序列同源性。此外，很少有人研究这些翅膀基因在将甲壳类动物与全变性昆虫区分开来的许多谱系中翅膀的发育模式或其他DLE结构中所起的作用，而该研究员的工作旨在填补这一空白。拟议的实验将测试翅膀基因的表达和功能是否真的是翅膀独有的，或者它们是否更广泛地指示了双层上皮结构的发育模式。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 2021, Broadening Participation of Groups Under-represented in Biology. The Fellowship supports a research and training plan for the Fellow that will increase the participation of groups underrepresented in biology. The research aim of the Fellow is to test whether similar structures that occur on different parts of the body are built using similar developmental instructions in diverse insects. The Fellow will accomplish this by looking at the gene expression within these insects. The results are relevant to a question that has been debated for hundreds of years: how did insect wings evolve? Unlike flighted vertebrates such as bats and birds, insect wings are not simple derivations of a limb, but rather a novel feature with no clear path of evolutionary history. This research program will not only allow the Fellow, who identifies as a Disabled scientist, to gain new skills, it dovetails with a program to train a cohort of undergraduate students that belong to Groups Under-represented in Biology. This cohort of students will be mentored through an active learning community course over four semesters where they will learn theory and lab skills in a supportive environment before rotating out to complete independent research of their choice at the end of the fourth semester. This will in turn set these diverse students, and Fellow, up for success in future biological research fields. Different structures have been hypothesized to be serially homologous to insect wings, from pronotal lobes, to abdominal gills, to leg segments. Recent efforts to evaluate these evolutionary relationships have relied on wing genes identified from Drosophila work, but these genes have not been assessed across other features comprised of the same tissue type as the wing: double-layered epithelia (DLE). The Fellow’s work will assess the role these genes play in structures made of the same tissue type that are not serially homologous to the wing. Thus, the Fellow will test the assumption of developmental hypotheses on the origin of wings that shared use of this network indicates serial homology with wings. Moreover, little work has been done on the role these wing genes play in developmental patterning of the wings or other DLE structures in the many lineages that separate crustaceans from holometabolous insects, a gap the Fellow’s work aims to fill. The proposed experiments will test if the expression and function of wing genes is truly unique to wings or if they are more broadly indicative of developmental patterning of double-layered epithelial structures.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.