Molecular Mechanisms and Evolution of Phenotypic Plasticity

表型可塑性的分子机制和进化

• 批准号: 10790490
• 负责人: JENNIFER A BRISSON
• 金额: $ 1.83万
• 依托单位: UNIVERSITY OF ROCHESTER
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 财政年份: 2022
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2022-01-01 至 2026-12-31
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10790490
• 关键词: Address; Aphids; Bypass; Complex; Cues; Developmental Process; Disease; Disease susceptibility; Environment; Epigenetic Process; Evolution; Exhibits; Female; Follistatin; Genes; Genetic; Genetic Polymorphism; Health; Height; Horizontal Gene Transfer; Hormones; Human; Knowledge; Life; Mission; Modeling; Molecular; Morphology; Nature; Organism; Phenotype; Pisum sativum; Plants; Prevalence; Process; Production; Research; Role; Signal Transduction; Testing; Textbooks; United States National Institutes of Health; Variant; Weight; Wing; asexual; dimorphism; experimental study; fascinate; genomic locus; human disease; innovation; insight; male; paralogous gene; programs; recruit; trait

Phenotypic plasticity is used by an incredible diversity of organisms, from plants to humans. Its ubiquity attests to its fundamental importance in life. This project addresses the fascinating and understudied question of the mechanistic basis of phenotypic plasticity – i.e., how developmental processes are influenced by environmental cues to cause phenotypic differences -- and, importantly, how those processes evolve. The focus here is on an innovative model, the pea aphid, which exhibits a textbook example of phenotypic plasticity. This species offers an unparalleled opportunity to examine the role of nature and nurture in phenotype determination: it exhibits dramatically different winged and wingless morphs that are induced by environmental conditions in genetically identical, asexual females and controlled by a single genetic locus in males. Thus, strikingly, two dimorphisms, each under different control mechanisms, exist within this single species. The proposed experiments build on the exciting recent discoveries made by the PI about the role of hormones and horizontally transferred genes in the female wing plasticity and about the identification of the wing polymorphism locus in males, which has an insertion containing a duplication of a gene that influences signaling (follistatin) and which is specific to wingless males. The proposed, vigorous research program aims to decipher the molecular mechanisms underlying the function and evolution of plasticity. Experiments on the wing plasticity will examine the regulatory changes that control it, the epigenetic changes that accompany it, and test if horizontally transferred genes are preferentially recruited into the process. Experiments on the genetic male wing dimorphism will use functional and evolutionary studies of the follistatin paralogs to establish how changes in these paralogs underlie male morphological evolution. Studies in females and males will be united with experiments that will test whether or not the more recently derived male dimorphism evolved by genetic accommodation of the female plasticity, hypothesizing that males bypass the environmental signals used by the female plasticity. These studies will provide some of the first insights into the mechanistic basis of genetic accommodation, where trait variation shifts from being caused by “nurture” to “nature”. These experiments will have broad implications for understanding the mechanistic basis and evolution of plasticity, which is significant from a human health perspective because of the numerous plastic traits that influence human health and disease.

从植物到人类，各种各样的生物体都利用表型可塑性。它的普遍存在证明了 其在生活中的根本重要性。这个项目解决了一个令人着迷且未被充分研究的问题 表型可塑性的机制基础——即发育过程如何受到影响 环境因素会导致表型差异，更重要的是，这些过程是如何进化的。这 这里的重点是一个创新模型，豌豆蚜，它展示了表型的教科书示例 可塑性。这个物种提供了一个无与伦比的机会来检验先天和后天的作用 表型测定：它表现出显着不同的有翅和无翅变形，这是由 遗传相同的无性雌性的环境条件，并由单个基因位点控制 男性。因此，令人惊讶的是，在这个单一的内部存在着两种二态性，各自处于不同的控制机制之下。 物种。所提出的实验建立在 PI 近期令人兴奋的关于以下作用的发现之上： 雌性翅膀可塑性中的激素和水平转移基因及其鉴定 雄性的翼多态性位点，其中有一个插入，其中包含影响基因的重复 信号（卵泡抑素），这是无翅雄性特有的。拟议的强有力的研究计划旨在 破译可塑性功能和演化背后的分子机制。实验上 翅膀可塑性将检查控制它的调节变化，伴随它的表观遗传变化， 并测试水平转移的基因是否优先被招募到该过程中。实验上 遗传雄性翅膀二态性将利用卵泡抑素旁系同源物的功能和进化研究来建立 这些旁系同源物的变化如何成为雄性形态进化的基础。针对女性和男性的研究将 结合实验来测试最近衍生的雄性二态性是否是由 女性可塑性的遗传调节，假设男性绕过环境信号 所用的女性可塑性。这些研究将为我们提供一些关于其机制基础的初步见解。 遗传调节，性状变异从“教养”引起转变为“自然”引起。这些 实验将对理解可塑性的机制基础和演化产生广泛的影响， 从人类健康的角度来看，这非常重要，因为影响塑料的众多特性 人类健康和疾病。

项目成果

Evolution and molecular mechanisms of wing plasticity in aphids.

• DOI: 10.1016/j.cois.2023.101142
• 发表时间: 2023-11
• 期刊: Current opinion in insect science
• 影响因子: 5.3
• 作者: Kevin D. Deem;Lauren Gregory;Xiaomi Liu;Omid Saleh Ziabari;Jennifer A. Brisson

Pea aphid winged and wingless males exhibit reproductive, gene expression, and lipid metabolism differences.

• DOI: 10.1016/j.cris.2022.100039
• 发表时间: 2022
• 期刊: Current research in insect science