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

合作研究：刺胞动物的系统发育——眼睛、基因表达和细胞类型的趋同进化

• 批准号: 2153775
• 负责人: Maria Pia Miglietta
• 金额: $ 39.27万
• 依托单位: Texas A&M University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2022
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2022-05-01 至 2025-04-30
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2153775&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Collaborative; Research; Phylogeny; Cnidaria; Convergent

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.

该项目将提高对水母类（“水母”）进化关系以及眼睛起源和进化的认识。 水母是人类最远的亲戚之一，它们的眼睛仍然使用与人类眼睛相似的基因。在水母类动物中，眼睛至少有9次是从一个共同的基因工具箱中独立起源的。这项研究将首先扩大水母关系的知识，以解开眼睛复杂的进化历史。接下来，这项研究将确定在每个单独起源的眼睛中表达的基因有多相似。为这个项目组建的团队代表了来自多个机构的科学家的新合作，他们具有独特但互补的专业知识。该研究将促进妇女和代表性不足的群体参与该项目的各个方面，将通过综合生物学培训改善STEM教育，并将研究纳入STEM本科课程和实地站的生物多样性研讨会。该团队将通过教育文章和外展活动增加公众参与，包括将魅力水母融入现有的K12外展计划。对不同眼睛的遗传学的公众宣传也将提供重要的信息，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迷人的标志，它为比较生物学家提供了在生命的单一历史中复制的事件。实验上也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有关在不同组织水平上如何重复进化的问题的机会。该项目将汇集不同的合作者群体，开发水母刺胞动物作为系统发育元模型，以解决眼睛在不同组织水平（包括基因，细胞和形态）的趋同进化。该奖项将支持以下研究：a）通过生成数据丰富的同源性来测试眼睛的同源性，其中包括Medusozoa的新转录组，以重建整个群体中眼睛的存在/不存在; B）比较会聚进化的眼睛和其他组织的基因表达谱（作为对照）从刺胞动物中鉴定基因表达的保守和会聚模式，以及c）将“树思维”结合到单细胞转录组学中，以分析细胞类型的遗传并量化会聚进化的眼睛中细胞类型的历史。 这些研究的结果将发表在同行评审的科学期刊上，并在科学会议上发表。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。