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会调整它们的生长方式，以应对各种内部和外部影响。相同的特征可能在雄性和雌性之间表现不同，或者看起来不同，这取决于发育中的生物体是否能够获得足够的食物。这种“有条件的”或“对环境作出反应的”发展是广泛存在的，并且在各种特征和物种之间迅速而巨大地多样化。过去的工作确定了许多重要的机制，调节条件响应的发展，然而，这种差异是如何出现在首位，以及随后的发展如何解释这些差异，并相应地调整自己，仍然知之甚少。本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的形式的上下文响应的发展，适合比较和实验研究。通过这个研究系统的透镜，这项工作的目的是（a）表征遗传网络，使复杂的性状，如角，翅膀和腿的发展，以启动和完成在不同的条件下，以及（B）调查这种调节如何从性状到性状的变化，从物种到物种，从而有助于生物多样性。这项研究进一步整合在多方面的科学推广活动，旨在开发资源，支持K12印第安纳州科学教学标准，培训K-12教师，并增加历史上代表性不足的人口在科学的参与。 生物体的形态和功能是通过发育过程的中介作用，通过基因型和环境的整合而出现的。拟议的工作将解决的发展机制，其中角甲虫物种Onthophagus整合基因型和环境中的有机体的形式和功能的发生在个体发育过程中，以及如何在这种整合的变化形状有机体的多样性内和该物种之间。这项研究将通过整合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来开辟新天地。此外，这项工作将以比较的方式在其情境响应性发展的程度或性质不同的性状之间以及在性状特定条件发展方面存在分歧的物种之间进行。拟议的工作有三个主要目标：第一，它将确定顺式调节结构在环境和男性/女性特定的发展中的作用。其次，它将描述这种作用是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之间多样化的。最后，本研究将评估相互作用的性质-以及其中的进化变化-几个已知的主调节器的条件依赖性发展和他们的上下文响应基因调控网络在生产种内形态变异。总的来说，拟议的工作旨在改变我们对发育机制的理解，这些机制将基因型和环境整合到个体发育过程中有机体形式和功能的起源中，该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并被认为值得通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查进行评估来支持的搜索.