EAGER: From Zero to Genome in Two Years: Transformative Techniques for Evo-lutionary Genetics

生物学家面临的一个重大挑战是了解生物体之间变异的遗传基础。要应对这一挑战，需要大量生物体具备“基因组能力”，也就是说，大量的遗传标记均匀分布在整个基因组中，可以组装成一张遗传图谱。这将使研究人员能够非常迅速地从大致定位染色体上的基因到识别DNA序列。在过去，开发这些工具既耗时又昂贵。该项目的目标是开发一套清晰的协议和计算软件，以快速生成几乎任何生物体的基因组分析工具。在对发育良好的模型线虫秀丽隐杆线虫（Caenorhabditis elegans）进行首次测试后，该技术将进一步完善，将其应用于非模型脊椎动物有机体——长尾管鱼（Syngnathus scovelli）。对这两种生物的研究将作为测试案例，从中将创建并广泛分发一套易于遵循的方法，包括用于数据生成的湿实验室程序和用于分析这些数据的软件。这项研究将通过增加研究人员的数量来产生广泛的影响，这些研究人员可以对他们所研究的生物体进行基因组化。这将为诸如哪些基因和等位基因促成了进化变化之类的经典未解之谜提供一套更通用的答案。此外，这些工具将帮助生物学家解决实际问题，如生物体如何应对气候变化的基因组基础是什么，这是我们这个时代的一个基本问题。

A significant challenge for biologists is understanding the genetic basis of variation among organisms. Meeting this challenge will require numerous organisms to become "genomically enabled", that is having a large number of genetic markers spread evenly throughout the genome that can be assembled into a genetic map. This will allow researchers to move very quickly from roughly locating a gene on a chromosome to identifying DNA sequences. In the past, developing these tools was time consuming and very expensive. The goal of this project is to develop a clear set of protocols and computational software to rapidly produce genomic analysis tools for just about any organism. After first testing the protocols on the well-developed model nematode worm, Caenorhabditis elegans, the techniques will be further refined by applying them to a non-model vertebrate organism, the pipefish Syngnathus scovelli. The research on these two organisms will serve as test cases from which an easily followed set of methods will be created and distributed widely, including the wet lab procedures for data generation and the software for the analysis of these data. This research will have broad impacts by increasing the number of researchers who can genomically enable the organisms they study. This will lead to a more general set of answers to classic unanswered questions such as what genes and alleles are contributing to evolutionary change. In addition these tools will help biologists tackle practical problems such as what is the genomic basis of how organisms respond to climate change, a fundamental problem of our time.