Cis-regulation and conditional chromatin remodeling in development and evolution of ontogenies in horned beetles

角甲虫个体发育和进化中的顺式调节和条件染色质重塑

• 批准号: 2243725
• 负责人: Armin Moczek
• 金额: $ 95万
• 依托单位: Indiana University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Continuing Grant
• 财政年份: 2023
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2023-09-01 至 2026-08-31
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2243725&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Cis; regulation; conditional; chromatin; remodeling

Organisms across the tree of life adjust the way they grow in response to diverse internal and external influences. The same traits may manifest differently in males compared to females, or look different depending on whether the developing organism had access to sufficient food or not. Such “conditional” or “context-responsive” development is wide-spread, and has diversified rapidly and greatly across traits and species. Past work identified many important mechanisms that regulate condition-responsive development, yet, how such differences arise in the first place, and how subsequent development interprets these differences and adjusts itself accordingly, remains very poorly understood. This research uses horned beetles as a study system to fill this void. Horned beetles possess highly diverse forms of context-responsive development that are amenable to comparative and experimental study. Through the lens of this study system this work aims to (a) characterize the genetic networks that allows the development of complex traits such as horns, wings, and legs to be both initiated and completed in response to varying conditions; as well as (b) investigate how this regulation changes from trait to trait, and from species to species, and thereby contributes to organismal diversity. This research is further integrated within multifaceted science outreach activities aimed at developing resources in support of K12 Indiana Science Teaching Standards, training K-12 teachers, and increasing the participation of historically underrepresented demographics in science. Organismal form and function emerge through the integration of genotype and environment via the agency of developmental processes. The proposed work will address the developmental mechanisms by which the horned beetle species Onthophagus integrates genotype and environment in the genesis of organismal form and function during ontogeny, and how changes in this integration shape organismal diversity both within and among this species. This research will break new ground by integrating the genome-wide analysis of chromatin accessibility and gene expression with the functional analysis of candidate genes and pathways. Further, this work will be executed in a comparative manner across traits that differ in the degree or nature of their context-responsive development, and across species that have diverged in trait-specific conditional development. The proposed work has three major objectives: first, it will identify the role of cis-regulatory architecture in environment- and male/female-specific development. Second, it will characterize how this role has diversified across taxa and traits representing varying degrees of evolutionary diversification and innovation. Finally, this research will assess the nature of interactions – as well as evolutionary changes therein – between several known master-regulators of condition-dependent development and their context-responsive gene regulatory networks in producing intraspecific morphological variation. Collectively, the proposed work aims to transform our understanding of the developmental mechanisms that integrate genotype and environment in the genesis of organismal form and function during ontogeny, and how changes in this integration shape organismal diversity both within and among species.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.

生命之树上的有机体根据不同的内部和外部影响调整它们的生长方式。与雌性相比，同样的特征在雄性身上可能表现得不同，或者看起来不同，这取决于发育中的有机体是否有足够的食物。这种“有条件的”或“对环境反应的”发育是广泛存在的，并且在不同的特征和物种之间迅速而极大地多样化。过去的工作发现了许多调节条件反应发展的重要机制，然而，这种差异最初是如何产生的，以及随后的发展如何解释这些差异并进行相应的自我调整，仍然知之甚少。这项研究使用角甲虫作为研究系统来填补这一空白。角甲虫具有高度多样化的上下文反应发展，可以进行比较和实验研究。通过这一研究系统的镜头，这项工作的目的是(A)表征允许复杂特征的发展的遗传网络，如角、翅膀和腿，以响应不同的条件；以及(B)调查这种调节如何从特征到特征，从物种到物种，从而促进生物多样性。这项研究进一步纳入了多方面的科学推广活动，旨在开发支持印第安纳州科学教学标准的资源，培训K-12教师，并增加历史上代表性不足的人口在科学领域的参与。生物体的形式和功能通过发育过程的中介，通过基因和环境的整合而出现。拟议的工作将解决角甲虫物种Onthphagus在个体发育过程中在生物形态和功能的起源中整合基因和环境的发育机制，以及这种整合的变化如何塑造该物种内和物种之间的生物多样性。这项研究将通过将染色质可及性和基因表达的全基因组分析与候选基因和途径的功能分析相结合，开辟新的领域。此外，这项工作将以一种比较的方式在不同程度或性质不同的上下文反应发育的特征之间执行，并在特定特征的条件发育中存在差异的物种之间进行比较。拟议的工作有三个主要目标：第一，它将确定顺势调控架构在环境和男性/女性特定发展中的作用。其次，它将描述这一角色如何在代表不同程度的进化多样化和创新的分类群和特征中多样化。最后，这项研究将评估在产生种内形态变异过程中，几个已知的条件依赖性发育的主调控者与它们的上下文响应基因调控网络之间相互作用的性质以及其中的进化变化。总的来说，拟议的工作旨在改变我们对个体发育过程中生物形态和功能起源中整合基因和环境的发育机制的理解，以及这种整合中的变化如何塑造物种内和物种之间的生物多样性。这一奖项反映了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。