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THE GENETICS AND EVOLUTION OF MATERNAL EFFECTS ON PARASITE RESISTANCE

母体对寄生虫抗性影响的遗传学和进化

基本信息

批准号：
NE/I026405/1
负责人：
Tom Little
金额：
$ 67.14万
依托单位：
University of Edinburgh
依托单位国家：
英国
项目类别：
Research Grant
财政年份：
2012
资助国家：
英国
起止时间：
2012 至无数据
项目状态：
已结题

来源：
https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=NE%2FI026405%2F1
关键词：
GENETICS EVOLUTION MATERNAL EFFECTS PARASITE

项目摘要

Different mothers will have different experiences. Some mothers will be able to eat more, or higher quality food. This will not only affect them, but also their offspring in how likely they are to contract an infectious disease or parasite. This is true for most organisms, including humans. For example, some animals simply make bigger eggs under certain conditions. In many animals this is when they have more food, but the less intuitive scenario can also occurs: some animals make larger eggs when there is less food. Either way, the bigger offspring from these eggs are more resistant to parasites. Such a strategy, where mothers prepare offspring for what they predict as tough times ahead, are called maternal effects. These are traits passed down to offspring that are not coded in their genes. However, independent of these maternal effects, a mother will also pass genes to her offspring. So, offspring may be resistant simply because their mother was resistant and they inherited her genes. Thus, there are two reasons an offspring could be resistant: maternal effects and genes (or a combination of both). We want to understand how these two effects work together to make offspring either susceptible or resistant to being infected by parasites, and we want to understand how populations might change (evolve) in this regard. The sort of fundamental experiments required would be very difficult to do in a human or a mouse, and so we have designed experiments with a small, rapidly-evolving crustacean, Daphnia. This crustacean is easy to work with in the laboratory, but is also found all over the world in small ponds and lakes. Therefore, any experiments done in the laboratory can inform us about what is happening in nature. Our experiments will:1) illustrate how maternal conditions (say, more or less food) affect how resistant their offspring are to infection2) determine if these maternal effects are costly and for example, whether or not they accelerate the aging process3) study how maternal effects differ depending on the genes of the mother4) determine how maternal effects evolve in nature as a consequence of parasite epidemicsAlthough elements of the proposed research are curiosity-driven, knowledge-transfer between such basic research and more applied realms is essential. In particular, this knowledge can help us to identify, and even predict, the conditions under which disease outbreaks may occur. In turn, end-users and policy-makers can develop the capacity to contain or avert outbreaks of diseases, either in humans, or as part of the effort to conserve vulnerable animal populations.

不同的母亲会有不同的经历。一些母亲将能够吃更多，或更高质量的食物。这不仅会影响它们，还会影响它们的后代感染传染病或寄生虫的可能性。对大多数生物来说都是如此，包括人类。例如，一些动物只是在特定条件下产下更大的蛋。对于许多动物来说，这是当它们有更多的食物时，但不太直观的情况也可能发生：一些动物在食物少的时候产下更大的蛋。不管怎样，这些卵产下的更大的后代对寄生虫的抵抗力更强。这样一种策略，即母亲让后代为她们预测的艰难时期做好准备，被称为母性效应。这些特征是遗传给后代的，而不是在他们的基因中编码。然而，除了这些母性影响之外，母亲也会将基因传给后代。所以，后代可能仅仅因为他们的母亲有抵抗力而遗传了她的基因。因此，后代产生抗药性的原因有两个：母亲的影响和基因（或两者的结合）。我们想了解这两种影响是如何共同作用，使后代对寄生虫感染敏感或有抵抗力的，我们想了解在这方面种群是如何变化（进化）的。这种基本的实验很难在人类或老鼠身上进行，所以我们设计了一种小型的、快速进化的甲壳类动物——水蚤的实验。这种甲壳类动物很容易在实验室中使用，但在世界各地的小池塘和湖泊中也能找到。因此，在实验室里做的任何实验都能告诉我们自然界发生了什么。我们的实验将：1)阐明母性条件（例如，食物的多或少）如何影响后代对感染的抵抗力；2)决定母性效应是否代价高昂，例如，它们是否会加速衰老过程；3)研究母性效应如何因母性基因的不同而不同；4)确定母性效应如何在寄生虫流行病的影响下在自然界中进化。这种基础研究和更多应用领域之间的知识转移是必不可少的。特别是，这些知识可以帮助我们识别，甚至预测疾病爆发可能发生的条件。反过来，最终用户和决策者可以发展控制或避免疾病暴发的能力，无论是在人类中，还是作为保护脆弱动物种群努力的一部分。