CAREER: Establishement and Maintenance of an Environmentally-Acquired Symbiosis

大多数动物，包括人类，都与有益的细菌有特定的联系，这些细菌有助于消化或提供防御有害病原体和寄生虫的能力。虽然一些动物将这些细菌直接从母亲传给后代，以确保获得这些细菌，但其他动物出生时没有细菌，然后必须从环境中获得这些有益的伴侣。面对数以百万计不同的环境微生物，生物体如何建立和维持这些专门的联系，人们知之甚少。在这里，研究人员利用宽头臭虫和伯克霍尔德氏菌之间的关系来研究形成宿主-微生物专门化的生态、免疫学和进化力量。该项目将结合环境采样、分子方法和实验，以探索细菌为宿主提供什么好处，哪些细菌基因促进宿主内部的建立，以及宿主如何应对替代细菌的引入。这一综合方法将提供对宿主和微生物属性如何影响动物-细菌协会的建立和维持的洞察。该项目将培养本科生和研究生以及一名博士后研究员。研究人员还将与本科和中学的视觉艺术和生物教师合作，将科学带入艺术课堂，促进探索如何利用艺术让学生接触科学。

Most animals, including humans, have specific associations with beneficial bacteria that facilitate digestion or provide defense against harmful pathogens and parasites. While some animals pass these bacteria directly from mother to offspring, ensuring acquisition, other animals are born bacteria-free and then must acquire these beneficial partners from the environment. Little is understood about the process by which organisms establish and maintain these specialized associations in the face of encountering millions of diverse environmental microbes. Here, researchers use the relationship between broad-headed bugs and Burkholderia bacteria to study the ecological, immunological and evolutionary forces that shape host-microbe specialization. The project will couple environmental sampling, molecular approaches and experimentation to explore what benefits the bacteria provide to the host, what bacterial genes facilitate establishment within the host, and how the host responds to the introduction of alternative bacteria. This comprehensive approach will provide insight into how both host and microbial properties shape the establishment and maintenance of animal-bacteria associations. The project will train undergraduate and graduate students as well as one postdoctoral fellow. The researchers will also work with visual arts and biology instructors at both the undergraduate and middle-school levels to bring science into the art classroom, facilitating exploration of how art can be used to expose students to science.