Collaborative Research: Phylogeny of Cnidaria - Convergent Evolution of Eyes, Gene Expression, and Cell Types

这个项目将提高对水母的进化关系和眼睛的起源和进化的认识。水母是人类的远亲之一，它们的眼睛仍然使用与人类眼睛相似的基因。在水母动物中，眼睛至少有9次是从一个共同的基因工具箱中单独产生的。这项研究将首先扩大对水母动物关系的了解，以解开眼睛复杂的进化史。接下来，这项研究将确定每个单独起源的眼睛中表达的基因有多相似。为该项目组建的团队代表了来自多个机构的科学家的新合作，他们具有不同但互补的专业知识。该研究将促进妇女和代表性不足的群体参与项目的各个方面，将通过综合生物学培训改善STEM教育，并将研究纳入STEM本科课程和一个野外站的生物多样性讲习班。该团队将通过教育文章和外展活动增加公众参与，包括将有魅力的水母纳入现有的K12外展计划。对不同眼睛遗传学的公众宣传也将提供重要信息，以提高对重要生物学概念和理论的理解。趋同进化是生物学的一个引人注目的标志，它为比较生物学家提供了在其他单一生命历史中复制的事件。同样在实验上易于处理的趋同特征，被称为“元模型”，为生物学家提供了解决在不同组织水平上进化的可重复性问题的机会。该项目将汇集不同群体的合作者，以发展水母动物刺胞动物作为系统发育的元模型，以解决眼睛在不同组织水平上的趋同进化，包括基因、细胞和形态。该奖项将支持以下研究：a)通过生成数据丰富的系统发育（包括水母的新转录组）来测试眼睛的同源性，以重建整个群体中眼睛的存在/缺失；B)比较来自刺胞动物的趋同进化眼睛和其他组织（作为对照）的基因表达谱，以确定保守的和趋同的基因表达模式；c)将“树思维”纳入单细胞转录组学，以分析趋同进化眼睛中细胞类型的系统发育并量化细胞类型的历史。这些研究的结果将发表在同行评议的科学期刊上，并在科学会议上发表。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 project will improve knowledge of the evolutionary relationships of medusozoa (“jellyfish”) and the origin and evolution of eyes. Jellyfish are among the most distant relatives of humans that have eyes that still use genes similar to those used in human eyes. Within medusozoans, eyes originated separately at least nine times from a common genetic toolkit. This research will first expand knowledge of medusozoan relationships to untangle the complex evolutionary history of eyes. Next, this research will determine how similar are the genes expressed in each of the separately originated eyes. The team assembled for this project represents a new collaboration of scientists from multiple institutions with distinct but complementary expertise. The research will promote participation of women and underrepresented groups in all aspects of the project, will improve STEM education through training in integrative biology, and will incorporate the research in STEM undergraduate courses and a biodiversity workshop at a field station. The team will increase public engagement through educational articles and outreach activities, including integration of charismatic jellyfish into existing K12 outreach programs. Public outreach on the genetics of diverse eyes will also provide important information to improve understanding of important biological concepts and theories.Convergent evolution is a fascinating hallmark of biology that provides comparative biologists with replicated events in the otherwise singular history of life. Convergent traits that are also experimentally tractable, referred to as ‘meta-models’, provide opportunities for biologists to address questions about how repeatable evolution is at different levels of organization. This project will bring together a diverse group of collaborators to develop medusozoan cnidarians as a phylogenetic meta-model to address convergent evolution of eyes at different levels of organization, including genes, cells, and morphology. This award will support research to: a) test homology of eyes by generating a data-rich phylogeny that includes new transcriptomes of Medusozoa to reconstruct presence/absence of eyes across the group; b) compare gene expression profiles of convergently evolved eyes and other tissues (as controls) from cnidarians to identify conserved and convergent patterns of gene expression, and c) incorporate ‘tree-thinking’ into single-cell transcriptomics to analyze cell-type phylogenies and quantify histories of cell-types in convergently evolved eyes. Results form these studies will be published in peer-reviewed scientific journals and presented at scientific meetings.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.