ABR: Ecology and Genetics of Microbial Evolution

9421237微生物执行各种生态功能，可能是有益的（例如，分解废物）或有害的（例如，人类和作物的病原体），这取决于特定的物种和环境背景。人们对某些微生物的生物化学和分子遗传学了解甚多，但对微生物的种群动态以及各种生态和遗传因素如何影响微生物的进化知之甚少。拟议的研究旨在确定和量化可能影响微生物种群动态的重要生态和遗传过程。有两个主要目标：(1)对宿主-病原体相互作用的动力学进行数学建模，以了解形成毒力的生态和进化力量，特别是与病原体传播的特定模式有关；(2)通过实验量化细菌种群中诸如竞争力和细胞大小等重要表型性状的遗传变异，包括有害突变的贡献，有利突变的替代，并且平衡了这种变异的多态性。

9421237 Lensky Microorganisms perform various ecological functions that may be either beneficial (e.g., decomposition of wastes) or deleterious (e.g., pathogens of humans and crops), depending on the particular species and environmental context. Much is known about the biochemistry and molecular genetics of certain microorganisms, but very little is known about the population dynamics of microorganisms and how various ecological and genetic factors affect microbial evolution. The proposed research seeks to identify and quantify important ecological and genetic processes that may influence the dynamics of microbial populations. There are two major objectives (1) To model mathematically the dynamics of host-pathogen interactions in order to understand the ecological and evolutionary forces that shape virulence, especially in relation to specific modes of pathogen transmission and (2) To quantify experimentally the genetic variation in bacterial populations for such important phenotypic traits as competitiveness and cell size, including the contribution of deleterious mutations, substitution of favorable mutations, and balanced polymorphisms to this variation.