Postdoctoral Fellowship FY22: Cis-regulatory basis of developmental plasticity and growth in the development and evolution of beetle horns, a class of highly diversified weapons

22 财年博士后奖学金：甲虫角（一类高度多样化的武器）发育和进化过程中的发育可塑性和增长的顺式调控基础

• 批准号: 2208912
• 负责人: Phillip Davidson
• 金额: $ 13.8万
• 依托单位: Davidson, Phillip Luke
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Fellowship Award
• 财政年份: 2022
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2022-06-01 至 2024-05-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2208912&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Postdoctoral; Fellowship; FY22; Cis; regulatory

This action funds an NSF Postdoctoral Research Fellowship in Biology for FY22, Integrative Research Investigating the Rules of Life Governing Interactions Between Genomes, Environment and Phenotypes. The fellowship supports research and training of the fellow that will contribute to the area of Rules of Life in innovative ways. How organisms develop is regulated through the interactions of genes and environmental conditions like nutrition. Gene regulation (turning genes “on” or “off”) therefore is an important point of control for many aspects of development, such as growth. Further, when gene regulation is modified by evolution, it can lead to the emergence of new traits. Yet, exactly how gene regulation is controlled is not fully understood. The fellow will research horned beetles, which are well known for their diverse forms of environment-dependent development, in order to understand how environment affects gene regulation to promote diversity. The fellow will also perform K-12 outreach and education. Nutrition-responsive and male/female dimorphic traits are among the fastest evolving phenotype classes, yet the contribution of cis-regulatory elements like enhancers and promoters in facilitating or hindering such diversification is still relatively unexplored. This research seeks to better understand the interplay between molecular and environmental factors in the development and evolution of beetle head horns, behaviorally and ecologically significant structures. Horn formation is restricted to males in most species, and may be further elaborated as alternative horned or hornless male morphs depending on larval nutrition. In other species, such nutrition-responsive development has been lost or even reversed such that females now grow elaborate head horns. The fellow will 1) characterize the roles of chromatin accessibility and regulatory element sequence in regulation of beetle horn development within species; 2) perturb horn gene network function to gain mechanistic insight into the epigenetic architecture underlying horn formation; and 3) analyze how regulatory elements have evolved to drive diversification of beetle horn shape and size across species. Collectively, this proposal will provide fundamental insight into the role of cis-regulatory elements in the evolutionary development of traits across multiple axes of biological diversification of relevance across the tree of life. This research will be directly integrated with two broader impact efforts including creating high school summer research opportunities in bioinformatics at Indiana University and developing educational resources on genomics for K-12 schools in south-central Indiana.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.

这一行动资助了NSF在22财年的生物学博士后研究奖学金，综合研究调查了支配基因组、环境和表型之间相互作用的生命规则。该奖学金支持研究员的研究和培训，这些研究员将以创新的方式为生活规则领域做出贡献。生物体的发育是通过基因和营养等环境条件的相互作用来调节的。因此，基因调控(打开或关闭基因)是许多发育方面的重要控制点，如生长。此外，当基因调控被进化改变时，可能会导致新性状的出现。然而，基因调控到底是如何控制的，目前还没有完全弄清楚。这位研究员将对角甲虫进行研究，以了解环境如何影响基因调控以促进多样性。角甲虫以其依赖环境的各种发育形式而闻名。该研究员还将进行K-12外展和教育。营养敏感型和雌雄二态性状是进化最快的表型类型之一，然而顺式调控元件如促进剂和启动子在促进或阻碍这种多样性方面的作用仍然相对未被探索。这项研究试图更好地理解分子和环境因素在甲虫头角、行为和生态意义重大结构的发育和进化中的相互作用。角的形成在大多数物种中仅限于雄性，并可根据幼虫的营养进一步阐述为有角或无角的雄性变种。在其他物种中，这种对营养反应的发育已经丢失，甚至逆转，以至于雌性现在长出了精心制作的头角。该研究员将1)表征染色质可及性和调节元件序列在调节物种内甲虫角发育中的作用；2)扰动角基因网络功能以获得对角形成的表观遗传结构的机械性洞察；3)分析调节元件如何进化以驱动不同物种甲虫角形状和大小的多样化。总而言之，这项提议将提供对顺式调控元件在跨生命树的生物多样性的多个轴的特征进化发展中的作用的根本洞察。这项研究将直接与两项更广泛的影响努力相结合，包括在印第安纳大学创造生物信息学的高中暑期研究机会，以及为印第安纳州中南部的K-12学校开发基因组学教育资源。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。