NSF PRFB FY 2023: Connecting physiological and cellular aging to individual quality in a long-lived free-living mammal.

NSF PRFB 2023 财年：将生理和细胞衰老与长寿自由生活哺乳动物的个体质量联系起来。

• 批准号: 2305890
• 负责人: Taylor Evans
• 金额: $ 24万
• 依托单位: Evans, Taylor C
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Fellowship Award
• 财政年份: 2024
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2024-06-01 至 2027-05-31
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2305890&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: NSF; PRFB; FY; 2023; Connecting

This action funds an NSF Postdoctoral Research Fellowship in Biology for FY 2023, 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. The ability of an organism to reproduce in specific environments (fitness), is not evenly distributed within populations. There are differing predictions that investing in current reproduction comes at a cost to survival and future reproduction. One hypothesis called the individual quality framework suggests that some individuals show higher ‘quality’, both reproducing more effectively and surviving longer. These ‘high quality’ individuals may be more able to weather adverse conditions and maintain reproduction while comparatively lower quality individuals are more impacted by negative environments such as food scarcity or land disturbance. This research will take advantage of a well-studied population of grey seals (Halichoerus grypus) that breed on Sable Island to evaluate the individual quality hypotheses. The fellow will collaborate with government scientists and community members in Canada at Sable Island National Park to increase public interest in the Sable Island seals and promote the value of long-term studies.Telomeres, repeating DNA segments which degrade with cell division and protect chromosomes from oxidative stress, are a gauge of somatic wear and may provide a metric for overall quality, thus linking cellular aging to expressed reproductive fitness. The fellow will resample DNA from marked seals that had early-life genetic samples collected at weaning. Telomere length will be estimated for new and archived samples using qPCR, and these lengths will provide telomere erosion rate. Telomere dynamics will be related to lifetime reproductive effort observed for each seal to evaluate whether longer, slower eroding telomeres correlate with higher reproductive success and survival. The project will also investigate whether ‘quality’ in terms of telomere dynamics is heritable, and whether maternal foraging strategy provides a pathway for the transmission of quality to offspring. The fellow will gain experience with telomere assays as well as Bayesian mark-recapture and state-space population modeling. For each field season during this work, the fellow will conduct targeted recruitment of undergraduate students from underrepresented groups to be research assistants, leveraging this project to expand access to fieldwork and broaden participation in behavioral ecology.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.

该行动为2023财年生物学的NSF博士后研究奖学金提供了资金，该研究综合研究调查了有关基因组，环境和表型之间相互作用的生活规则。奖学金支持对研究员的研究和培训，这些研究和培训将以创新的方式为生活规则做出贡献。组织在特定环境（健身）中复制的能力在人群中均匀分布。有不同的预测是，对当前繁殖的投资是为了生存和未来繁殖的代价。一个称为个人质量框架的假设表明，有些人表现出更高的“质量”，既可以更有效地再现，又可以生存更长的时间。这些“高质量”的人可能会更有能力度过不利条件和维持繁殖，而质量较低的人则受到负面环境（例如粮食稀缺或土地灾难）的影响更大。这项研究将利用繁殖的灰密封群（Halichoerus Grypus）的优势，这些灰密封（Halichoerus Grypus）在黑貂岛上繁殖以评估个体质量的假设。该研究员将与加拿大的加拿大苏布尔岛国家公园的政府科学家和社区成员合作，以增加对黑貂岛密封的公共利益并促进长期研究的价值。TELOMERES，重复与细胞分裂降解的DNA片段，并保护细胞分裂并保护氧化染色体免受氧化物的压力，是躯体磨损的，可以衡量良好的良好型，并可以为整体质量提供质量的贴合性，从而链接出良好的型号，使其具有良好的效果，并具有敏捷的敏捷性。该研究员将从明显的印章中重新取DNA，这些密封件在断奶时收集了早期生命的遗传样本。端粒长度将用于使用QPCR的新样品和存档的样品，这些长度将提供端粒侵蚀率。端粒动力学将与观察到的每个密封的寿命生殖努力有关，以评估较长的较慢侵蚀端粒是否与较高的生殖成功和生存相关。该项目还将研究“质量”在端粒动力学方面是否可以遗传，以及产妇觅食策略是否为将质量传输到后代提供了途径。该研究员将获得端粒测定法以及贝叶斯标记率和州空间人口建模的经验。在这项工作中的每个实地季节中，该研究员将进行有针对性的招募人数不足的群体的本科生作为研究助理，并利用该项目扩大了对现场工作的机会并扩大行为生态学的参与。该奖项反映了NSF的法定任务，并认为通过基金会的知识绩效和广泛的影响来通过评估来获得珍贵的支持，并以评估的支持是宝贵的。