Ecological genomics of developmental timing

植物生物学的主要目标之一是描述基因序列水平上的变异如何产生表型变异。一个快速进展的领域是描述了遗传模型植物A。thaliana，影响一个关键发育性状的变异，即从营养生长向生殖生长的过渡。尽管取得了这一进展，但尚不清楚这种变化有多少是适应性的。 我将研究是否在发育时间和发育对冷的敏感性方面存在倾斜（即，这些特征和地理因素之间的关系）已经在入侵种群的A。thaliana，平行于我在欧洲样品中检测到的品系。入侵种中的平行渐变系是A. Thaliana是适应性的。我还将研究两个主要的发育基因，FRI和FLC，是否在N。美国，并导致这些特征和适应性的地理差异。 我的具体目标是：（1）收集一套北美A。（2）利用这些SNP数据对N.美国A. thaliana种群和发表的欧亚样本SNP数据，将N.（3）检验北美入侵种在发育时间上是否存在一个平行的渐变群;（4）对N.（5）将FRI和FLC都可变的品系种植到田间位点，并测量这些基因座处等位基因频率的自然变化。拟议的工作将支持培训几个HQP和推进我们的知识的发育时间，植物繁殖，和入侵物种的遗传学，因为它评估的分子遗传和环境变异的作用，在塑造复杂的性状，并测试遗传和进化的平行性。

One of plant biology's major goals is to describe how variation in genes at the sequence level creates phenotypic variation. One area of rapid progress has been describing how variation at regulatory genes in the genetic model plant, A. thaliana, affects variation in a key developmental trait, the transition from vegetative to reproductive growth. Despite this progress, it is unclear how much of this variation is adaptive.   I will investigate whether clines in development timing and developmental sensitivity to cold (i.e., relationships between these traits and geographic factors) have evolved in invasive populations of A. thaliana, parallel to clines I detected in European samples. Parallel clines in invasives would be strong evidence that the variation in developmental timing and developmental sensitivity in A. thaliana is adaptive. I will also investigate if two major developmental genes, FRI and FLC, are variable in N. America and lead to geographic variation in these traits and fitness.   My specific aims are to: (1) Collect a set of North American A. thaliana ecotypes over a broad geographic range, and genotype them for a large set of SNP markers to assess population genetic structure and linkage disequilibrium, (2) Use these SNP data for N. American A. thaliana populations and published SNP data on Eurasian samples to place N. American invasives into a global phylogeographic context, (3) Test whether a parallel cline in developmental timing has evolved among N. American accessions, and if  it depends on FRI functionality, (4) Test for parallel geographic divergence in developmental sensitivity to cold in N. American accessions, (5) Plant lines variable for both FRI and FLC into field sites, and measure natural changes in allele frequency at these loci. The proposed work will support training several HQP and advance our knowledge of developmental timing, plant reproduction, and the genetics of invasive species because it evaluates the roles of molecular genetic and environmental variation in shaping complex traits, and tests for genetic and evolutionary parallelism.