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

该行动资助了美国国家科学基金会2023财年生物学博士后研究奖学金，研究基因组，环境和表型之间相互作用的生命规则的综合研究。该奖学金支持将以创新方式对生活规则领域作出贡献的研究员的研究和培训。有机体在特定环境中繁殖的能力（适应性）在种群中不是均匀分布的。有不同的预测认为，对当前繁殖的投资是以生存和未来繁殖为代价的。一种被称为个体质量框架的假设认为，一些个体表现出更高的“质量”，既能更有效地繁殖，又能活得更久。这些“高质量”的个体可能更有能力抵御不利条件并保持繁殖，而相对较低质量的个体则更容易受到诸如食物短缺或土地干扰等负面环境的影响。这项研究将利用在黑貂岛上繁殖的灰海豹（Halichoerus grypus）的充分研究种群来评估个体质量假设。该研究员将在黑貂岛国家公园与加拿大政府科学家和社区成员合作，以提高公众对黑貂岛海豹的兴趣，并促进长期研究的价值。端粒是重复的DNA片段，随着细胞分裂而降解，保护染色体免受氧化应激，是体细胞磨损的衡量标准，可能提供整体质量的衡量标准，从而将细胞老化与表达的生殖健康联系起来。这名研究员将从有标记的海豹身上重新采集DNA，这些海豹在断奶时收集了早期生命的基因样本。端粒长度将估计新的和存档的样品使用qPCR，这些长度将提供端粒侵蚀率。端粒动力学将与每只海豹的终生生殖努力有关，以评估更长、更慢的端粒侵蚀是否与更高的生殖成功率和存活率相关。该项目还将研究端粒动力学方面的“质量”是否可遗传，以及母体觅食策略是否提供了将质量传递给后代的途径。该研究员将获得端粒分析、贝叶斯标记再捕获和状态空间人口建模方面的经验。在这项工作的每个实地季节，研究员将有针对性地从代表性不足的群体中招募本科生担任研究助理，利用这个项目扩大实地工作的机会，扩大对行为生态学的参与。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

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.