CAREER: How plant genotype and environmental factors jointly influence the structure of microbial communities and plant health

本奖项全部或部分由《2021年美国救援计划法案》（公法117- 2）资助。了解宿主生物及其常驻微生物群落如何相互作用是生物学的核心挑战，具有从农业到人类健康的广泛影响。一个主要的问题是什么因素和机制塑造了微生物群落的组成。一个相关的问题是微生物群落的结构是否以及如何影响宿主。该项目通过关注不同的环境因素如何与宿主遗传变异相结合，塑造微生物群落的组成和功能影响来解决这两个问题。这项工作将利用杨树中已建立的高度可接近的植物-真菌共生关系，其中叶子内生菌已知具有疾病保护作用。一个补充的教育计划将通过学生主导的工作来丰富和拓宽研究，研究普通花园和温室实验中内生菌群落结构驱动因素的季节变化。总的来说，这个CAREER项目将加深我们对环境和基因型如何影响植物内生菌群落和疾病保护的理解，同时促进STEM领域的多样性，并为面对气候变化的保护和作物生产做出贡献。众所周知，植物及其相关微生物群落之间的相互作用对环境很敏感，但这种变化的潜在驱动因素却知之甚少。这个CAREER项目测试了植物基因型如何与环境中不同的、非生物的和生物的成分相互作用，从而引起相关微生物群落的变化的机制假设。这项工作将在杨树模型系统（Populus trichocarpa）中进行，在这个系统中，寄主遗传、叶真菌和不同的环境因素可以精确控制和量化。第一个目的是考察不同环境因子和植物基因型如何共同影响真菌叶片内生菌群落的组成。第二个目标是了解内生菌群落结构如何影响植物，特别是验证内生菌群落系统发育多样性的增加为寄主植物提供更高程度的疾病保护的假设。第三个目标通过测试特定植物性状（表皮蜡质水平）如何影响内生菌群落结构，从而间接影响疾病易感性，将前两个目标联系起来。通过阐明宿主对有益真菌控制的环境敏感性，这个CAREER项目的结果将为全球保护植物生物多样性和为不断增长的人口可持续种植作物的努力提供信息。该项目的教育部分将为不同群体的高中生，本科生和研究生以及博士后学者提供研究机会。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 award is funded in whole or in part under the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 (Public Law 117- 2). Understanding how host organisms and their resident microbial communities interact is a central challenge in biology, with broad implications ranging from agriculture to human health. A primary question is what factors and mechanisms shape the composition of microbial communities. A related issue is whether and how the structure of microbial communities affects the host. This project addresses these two questions by focusing on how distinct environmental factors, in combination with host genetic variation, shape the composition and functional influence of microbial communities. The work will take advantage of an established, highly accessible plant-fungal symbiosis in Populus, in which leaf endophytes are known to confer disease protection. A complementary educational program will enrich and broaden the research through student-led work investigating seasonal variation in the drivers of endophyte community structure in common gardens and in greenhouse experiments. Overall, this CAREER project will deepen our understanding of how environment and genotype affect endophyte communities and disease protection in plants, while promoting diversity in a STEM field and contributing to conservation and crop production in the face of climate change.Interactions between plants and their associated microbial communities are known to be sensitive to the environment, but the underlying drivers of this variation are poorly understood. This CAREER project tests mechanistic hypotheses for how plant genotypes interact with distinct, abiotic and biotic components of the environment to give rise to variation in associated microbial communities. This work will be conducted in the cottonwood model system (Populus trichocarpa), in which host genetics, leaf fungi, and distinct environmental factors can be precisely controlled and quantified. The first objective tests how distinct environmental factors and plant genotype jointly influence the composition of fungal leaf endophyte communities. The second objective is to understand how endophyte community structure affects plants, specifically testing the hypothesis that increasing phylogenetic diversity in an endophyte community provides the host plant with a higher degree of disease protection. The third objective connects the prior two objectives by testing how a particular plant trait (the level of cuticular wax) influences endophyte community structure, thereby indirectly affecting disease susceptibility. By elucidating the environmental sensitivity of host control over beneficial fungi, the results of this CAREER project will inform global efforts to conserve plant biodiversity and to sustainably grow crops for a growing human population. The educational components of the project will provide research opportunities to a diverse group of high school, undergraduate and graduate students, and a postdoctoral scholar.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.