Ecology and evolution of plant-animal and host-microbe mutualisms

植物-动物和宿主-微生物互利共生的生态学和进化

• 批准号: RGPIN-2021-03711
• 负责人: Frederickson, Megan
• 金额: $ 4.74万
• 依托单位: University of Toronto
• 依托单位国家: 加拿大
• 项目类别: Discovery Grants Program - Individual
• 财政年份: 2022
• 资助国家: 加拿大
• 起止时间: 2022-01-01 至 2023-12-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nserc-crsng.gc.ca/ase-oro/Details-Detailles_eng.asp?id=751443
• 关键词: Ecology; evolution; plant; animal; host

My research team studies the ecology and evolution of mutualism. Most animals and plants are involved in at least one mutualism; they depend on other species for nutrition, protection, or dispersal in interactions that feed back to benefit to their partners. Well-known examples of mutualism include pollination, seed dispersal, and ant-plant symbioses, but the fastest growing area of mutualism research is the host-associated microbiome, a term that refers either to all the microbes living together in or on a host, or their collective genomes. Many microbes in these communities are beneficial to hosts, or at least not pathogenic, but there are many open questions about how microbiomes affect host physiology, ecology, and evolution. My research program seeks to understand how mutualism links the fates of interacting species, affecting their distribution and abundance, trait and molecular evolution, and even the diversification of life on Earth. This grant addresses four fundamental questions about mutualism ecology and evolution in diverse plant-animal and host-microbe systems: 1) How does mutualism evolve at a genomic level? Studying ant-plant and legume-rhizobium mutualisms, we will explore mutualism's molecular basis and use approaches from evolutionary genomics to infer how selection acts on genes that encode mutualistic traits. 2) How do multiple mutualisms evolve at micro- and macro-evolutionary scales? We will test whether pollinators and ant mutualists exert non-additive selection on a tropical plant in field common garden and assemble a global dataset of multiple plant-animal and plant-microbe mutualisms to explore how they evolve in tandem across the plant phylogeny. 3) Can we predict host benefits across microbiomes and environments? We are developing a high-throughput experimental system using the tiny aquatic plant Lemna minor and its microbiota, and we will test the outcome of host-microbe interactions across many distinct microbial communities and in many multivariate environments. 4) Which 'second genome' has more persistent transgenerational effects: the microbiome or the epigenome? We will use our new system from 3) to grow host populations in stressful and benign environments and experimentally manipulate microbiota and epigenetic marks, measuring host phenotypes and fitness across generations. We will determine the relative importance of the microbiome and the epigenome to transgenerational plasticity, especially in response to stress. This research will significantly improve our understanding of how mutualisms evolve through studies of real-world systems with high ecological or genomic complexity. It will also provide broad training to HQP who will learn to conduct rigorous lab and field experiments and acquire in-demand skills in molecular and computational biology. This integrative approach encourages the intellectual development of HQP and will prepare them for careers in basic or applied science.

我的研究团队研究生态学和互利共生的进化。大多数动物和植物都参与了至少一种互惠共生;它们依赖于其他物种的营养，保护，或在相互作用中传播，反馈给它们的伙伴。互利共生的著名例子包括授粉、种子传播和蚂蚁-植物共生，但互利共生研究发展最快的领域是宿主相关微生物组，这个术语指的是在宿主中或宿主上共同生活的所有微生物，或者它们的集体基因组。这些群落中的许多微生物对宿主有益，或者至少不是致病的，但关于微生物组如何影响宿主生理学，生态学和进化还有许多悬而未决的问题。我的研究计划旨在了解互利共生如何联系相互作用的物种的命运，影响它们的分布和丰度，性状和分子进化，甚至地球上生命的多样化。 这项资助解决了关于互利共生生态学和不同植物-动物和宿主-微生物系统进化的四个基本问题：1）互利共生如何在基因组水平上进化？通过研究蚂蚁-植物和豆类-根瘤菌的互利共生，我们将探索互利共生的分子基础，并使用进化基因组学的方法来推断选择如何作用于编码互利共生性状的基因。 2)在微观和宏观进化尺度上，多重互惠是如何进化的？我们将测试传粉者和蚂蚁互利主义者是否对野外常见花园中的热带植物进行非加性选择，并组装一个多个植物-动物和植物-微生物互利主义的全球数据集，以探索它们如何在植物生殖过程中协同进化。 3)我们能预测宿主对微生物组和环境的益处吗？我们正在开发一个高通量的实验系统，使用微小的水生植物浮萍及其微生物群，我们将测试宿主-微生物相互作用在许多不同的微生物群落和许多多元环境中的结果。 4)哪一个“第二基因组”具有更持久的跨代效应：微生物组还是表观基因组？我们将使用我们的新系统3）在压力和良性环境中培养宿主种群，并通过实验操纵微生物群和表观遗传标记，测量宿主的表型和世代适应性。我们将确定微生物组和表观基因组对跨代可塑性的相对重要性，特别是在应对压力时。 这项研究将大大提高我们的理解如何通过研究具有高度生态或基因组复杂性的现实世界系统的互惠进化。它还将为HQP提供广泛的培训，他们将学习进行严格的实验室和现场实验，并获得分子和计算生物学方面的技能。这种综合方法鼓励HQP的智力发展，并将为基础或应用科学的职业生涯做好准备。