NSF Postdoctoral Fellowship in Biology FY 2022: Quantifying the microbiome's contribution to host acclimation and evolution under stress

2022 财年 NSF 生物学博士后奖学金：量化微生物组对应激下宿主适应和进化的贡献

• 批准号: 2208910
• 负责人: Lana Bolin
• 金额: $ 13.8万
• 依托单位: Bolin, Lana Gayle
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Fellowship Award
• 财政年份: 2023
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2023-08-01 至 2025-07-31
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2208910&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: NSF; Postdoctoral; Fellowship; Biology; FY

This action funds an NSF Postdoctoral Research Fellowship in Biology for FY 2022, 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. Global environmental change is occurring at such a rapid pace that organisms are struggling to adapt to it. However, forecasts of species responses to change have left out potentially pivotal players: the microbes that live with organisms, called host-associated microbes. Soil microbes often benefit plants in new environments, but this benefit may ultimately reduce plants’ ability to evolve in response to these environments. This project investigates the relative strength of these opposing forces. That is, to understand whether microbes ultimately help or hinder plants in their responses to global change. The fellow will also conduct a case study as a mentor to local community college students. The case study focuses on drought stress on a common, native plant in New Mexico, the most water-stressed state in the US. Understanding the drivers and outcomes of host-associate microbes will yield more accurate predictions of species’ responses to global change. This project uses field experiments, metagenomic analyses, and population modeling to investigate the most important microbial, ecological, and evolutionary drivers of microbe-mediated host stress responses, and to scale these up to predict host population responses to future conditions. First, a field experiment will manipulate the presence/absence of microbes to quantify their relative influence on plant acclimation (e.g. buffering, plasticity) and adaptation (e.g. natural selection, opportunity for selection) to drought stress. Then, meta-genomic and -transcriptomic data will identify microbial properties that may underlie these effects. Finally, microbial effects on individuals will be scaled up to population growth using integral projection models that forecast how microbes will influence host persistence under future stress scenarios. The fellow will create a paid summer research program that brings local community college students to the University of New Mexico (UNM) campus to participate in this research, and to design and conduct independent research under the mentorship of the fellow and UNM graduate students. Altogether this project will expand the fellow’s range of experimental, computational, and modeling approaches for a future research faculty position, and construct a novel, general framework for innovative research on the evolutionary ecology of host-microbiome interactions to anchor a future research program.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.

这一行动为NSF 2022财年生物学博士后研究奖学金提供了资金，综合研究调查了基因组、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。全球环境变化发生得如此之快，以至于生物体正在努力适应它。然而，对物种对变化反应的预测遗漏了潜在的关键角色：与有机体生活在一起的微生物，称为寄主相关微生物。土壤微生物通常使植物在新的环境中受益，但这种好处最终可能会降低植物对这些环境的进化能力。这个项目调查的是这些对立力量的相对力量。也就是说，了解微生物最终是帮助还是阻碍植物对全球变化的反应。这位研究员还将作为当地社区大学生的导师进行案例研究。该案例研究的重点是干旱对新墨西哥州一种常见原生植物的胁迫，新墨西哥州是美国水分压力最大的州。了解宿主相关微生物的驱动因素和结果将对物种对全球变化的反应做出更准确的预测。该项目使用田间实验、元基因组分析和种群建模来研究微生物介导的宿主应激反应的最重要的微生物、生态和进化驱动因素，并扩大这些因素以预测宿主群体对未来条件的反应。首先，田间实验将操纵微生物的存在/不存在，以量化它们对植物适应(如缓冲、可塑性)和适应(如自然选择、选择机会)的相对影响。然后，元基因组和转录组数据将确定可能支持这些影响的微生物特性。最后，微生物对个体的影响将扩大到种群增长，使用积分预测模型来预测微生物在未来压力情景下将如何影响宿主的持久性。该研究员将创建一个有偿暑期研究项目，将当地社区大学生带到新墨西哥大学(UNM)校园参与这项研究，并在该研究员和新墨西哥大学研究生的指导下设计和进行独立研究。总之，该项目将为未来的研究人员职位扩大实验、计算和建模方法的范围，并为宿主-微生物群相互作用的进化生态学的创新研究构建一个新颖的一般框架，以锚定未来的研究计划。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。