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

2021 财年 NSF 生物学博士后奖学金：双层上皮的发育模式和昆虫翅膀的进化起源

• 批准号: 2109706
• 负责人: Abigail Hayes
• 金额: $ 13.8万
• 依托单位: Hayes, Abigail M
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Fellowship Award
• 财政年份: 2021
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2021-07-01 至 2023-08-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2109706&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: NSF; Postdoctoral; Fellowship; Biology; FY

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.

该行动资助 2021 财年 NSF 生物学博士后研究奖学金，扩大生物学领域代表性不足群体的参与。该奖学金支持该研究员的研究和培训计划，该计划将增加生物学领域代表性不足的群体的参与。该研究员的研究目的是测试不同昆虫身体不同部位的相似结构是否是使用相似的发育指令构建的。 该研究员将通过观察这些昆虫的基因表达来实现这一目标。这些结果与一个已经争论了数百年的问题相关：昆虫翅膀是如何进化的？与蝙蝠和鸟类等会飞的脊椎动物不同，昆虫的翅膀并不是肢体的简单衍生，而是一种没有明确进化历史路径的新特征。这项研究计划不仅能让被认定为残疾科学家的研究员获得新技能，而且与培训一群属于生物学领域代表性不足群体的本科生的计划相吻合。这群学生将通过四个学期的主动学习社区课程接受指导，在支持性环境中学习理论和实验室技能，然后在第四学期末轮流完成他们选择的独立研究。这反过来又将使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。不同的结构被假设与昆虫翅膀连续同源，从前额叶到腹部鳃，再到腿节。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中进行评估：双层上皮（DLE）。该研究员的工作将评估这些基因在由与机翼并非系列同源的相同组织类型构成的结构中所发挥的作用。因此，研究员将测试关于翅膀起源的发育假说的假设，该网络的共享使用表明与翅膀的序列同源性。此外，在将甲壳类动物与全变态昆虫区分开的许多谱系中，这些翅膀基因在翅膀或其他 DLE 结构的发育模式中所起的作用还没有做多少工作，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正是翅膀所独有的，或者它们是否更广泛地指示双层上皮结构的发育模式。该奖项反映了 NSF 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。