BRC-BIO: Establishing a new model system to study the relationship between gut microbiome and host niche specialization

大多数动物的肠道里都有一群微生物。这些微生物可以使宿主动物消耗特定的饮食或具有特定的生活方式，否则宿主将无法做到这一点。这项研究将检查被称为蜜罐蚂蚁的魅力昆虫的肠道微生物群。蜜罐蚁群中的一些成员是高度专业化的，因此它们的肠道可以扩张到比普通蚂蚁大很多倍。它们这样做是为了在食物充足的时候储存食物，这样它们就可以在食物有限的时候养活蚁群。这项研究将回答以下问题：肠道微生物群如何帮助食物在数月的储存中保存，它如何为蚂蚁的饮食补充它们可能无法直接从食物中获得的营养，以及它如何帮助蚂蚁消耗的一些食物材料解毒。这项对蜜罐蚂蚁肠道微生物组的研究可以更广泛地了解微生物如何帮助它们的宿主拥有专门的饮食和生活方式，并可以帮助我们了解微生物如何用于长期食物储存。蜜罐蚂蚁也将被纳入蚂蚁游客中心，该中心将教育公众，让孩子们对这些动物以及科学家如何研究它们感到兴奋。蜜罐蚂蚁是研究肠道微生物群与趋同进化之间关系的理想系统，在世界各地不同地点发现的三个不同亚科中至少有16个独立进化的属。这项研究为研究北美半干旱栖息地中发现的蜜罐蚁属Myrmecocystus的微生物群提供了起点。PI和他们的团队将使用野外采集、群落扩增子测序、蛋白质组学、代谢组学、pH测量和高效液相色谱来表征六种Myrmecocystus肠道中的微生物群落和化学环境。这项工作将在微生物培养物和活蚁群的实验之后进行，以确定微生物群是否能解毒植物防御化合物，提供补充营养，或防止食物变质。来自这些实验、化学分析、扩增子测序、分离基因组测序和亚转录组学的数据将用于确定食物剥夺和植物毒素如何影响微生物组。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。

Most animals house a community of microorganisms in their guts. These microbes can allow the host animal to consume a particular diet or have a particular lifestyle, which the host would not be able to do otherwise. This research will examine the gut microbiome of charismatic insects called honeypot ants. Some of the honeypot ant colony members are highly specialized so that their guts can expand to be many times larger than a typical ant. They do this to store food when food is plentiful, so that they can feed the colony when food is limited. This research will answer questions about how the gut microbiome may help with food preservation over many months of storage, how it may supplement the diet of the ants with nutrients they may not get directly from their food, and how it may help to detoxify some of the food material that the ants consume. This research into the gut microbiomes of honeypot ants can inform, more generally, on how microorganisms can help their hosts to have specialized diets and lifestyles and can help us to understand how microbes can be used for long-term food storage. The honeypot ants will also be included in an Ant Visitor Center that will educate the public and get children excited about these animals and how scientists study them. Honeypot ants are an ideal system to study the relationship between gut microbiome and convergent evolution, having at least 16 independently evolved genera in three different subfamilies found in different locations around the world. This research provides the starting point into the microbiome of honeypot ants with one genus, Myrmecocystus, found in the semi-arid habitats of North America. The PI and their team will use field collections, community amplicon sequencing, proteomics, metabolomics, pH measurements and HPLC to characterize the microbial community and chemical environment in the guts of six species of Myrmecocystus. This work will be followed by experiments with microbial cultures and live ant colonies to determine whether microbiota detoxify plant defense compounds, provide supplemental nutrients, or prevent food spoilage. Data from these experiments, chemical analyses, amplicon sequencing, isolate genome sequencing and metatranscriptomics will be used to determine how food deprivation and plant toxins impact microbiomes.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.