NSF PRFB FY23: Methylation and microbes as moderators of genotype-by-environment interactions

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。预测生物对气候变化的反应是具有挑战性的，因为它们的反应对每个个体来说似乎是随机的或独特的。将驱动个体反应的过程与种群或物种水平上的结果联系起来，可以改善预测。该项目的主要目标是研究DNA结构的变化和与微生物的关系这两个因素如何影响对环境的反应。该项目调查了这些因素在不同环境和不同时间的蚱蜢物种中的模式。该项目将测试包括这些因素如何改善对气候变化影响的预测。该研究员将与当地一所社区大学的教师和学生合作，寻找向广大受众解释气候变化影响的最佳方法。该研究员还将让社区大学和转学生参与研究过程。该项目研究了在环境变化的生态和进化反应研究中两个重要的新兴机制的罕见组合：CpG甲基化和微生物组。通过多种方法的结合，研究人员将验证表观遗传变化和共生关系有助于通过提高低海拔地区的存活率和缓解高海拔地区对能量获得和繁殖力的温度限制来放松适应性限制的假设。该研究员将首先描述甲基化和微生物组在海拔上的自然模式，同时通过现场互惠移植实验控制基因型。接下来，实验室普通花园实验将建立特定环境因素及其对共生体、甲基化模式和表型结果的影响之间的联系。此外，通过给蚱蜢喂食无菌、抗生素或益生菌处理过的食物来操纵微生物组的实验，将阐明在受控环境下微生物组、甲基化水平和表型结果之间的关系。最后，研究员将分析博物馆标本中甲基化和微生物组随时间变化的模式，并使用历史与当代的比较来测试这些因素是否能更好地预测气候变化对蚱蜢系统的影响。该研究员将通过她更广泛的影响计划获得教学经验，并通过学习表观遗传学方法来增加她用于解决研究问题的方法范围。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. Predicting how organisms will react to climate change is challenging because their responses can seem random or unique to each individual. Linking processes that drive individual responses to outcomes at the level of populations or species could improve predictions. This project’s main goal is to study how two factors, changes to DNA structure and relationships with microbes, affect responses to the environment. The project investigates patterns in these factors across environments and over time in a grasshopper species. The project will test how including these factors improves predictions of the impacts of climate change. The fellow will partner with teachers and students at a local community college to find the best methods of explaining the impacts of climate change to broad audiences. The fellow will also involve community college and transfer students in the research process.The project investigates a rare combination of two significant emerging mechanisms in the study of ecological and evolutionary responses to variation in the environment: CpG methylation and microbiomes. Using a combination of approaches, the fellow will test the hypothesis that epigenetic changes and symbiotic relationships help to relax fitness constraints by improving survival at low elevation and easing temperature constraints on energy gain and fecundity at high elevation. The fellow will first characterize natural patterns in methylation and microbiomes across elevation, while controlling for genotype by using a field reciprocal transplant experiment. Next, laboratory common garden experiments will establish links between specific environmental factors and their effects on symbionts, methylation patterns, and phenotypic outcomes. Complementarily, experiments manipulating the microbiome, by feeding grasshoppers with sterile, antibiotic, or probiotic-treated food, will elucidate relationships between the microbiome, methylation levels, and phenotypic outcomes under controlled environments. Lastly, the fellow will analyze patterns in methylation and microbiomes over time in museum specimens, and use historical-contemporary comparisons to test whether these factors can better predict the impact of climate change on this grasshopper system. The fellow will gain teaching experience through her broader impacts plan, and increase the scope of approaches she uses to tackle her research questions by learning epigenetic methods.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.