Dimensions US-China: Collaborative Research: An integrated understanding of how polyploidy generates biodiversity

所有开花植物都是古老的和/或最近的多倍体(由于全基因组复制，每个染色体都有两个或更多的副本)。这种现象被认为是生物适应和范围扩大的主要驱动力，但多倍体到底如何促进生物多样性，以及哪些基因组机制或功能特征是多倍体成功的基础，仍然是悬而未决的问题。这项工作将使用野生草莓属(Fragaria)来解决长期存在的问题并检验基本假设。通过使用深入的系统发育和种群基因组采样，结合对气候不同的田间花园中特征和基因表达的表征，这项工作将确定功能/遗传多样性在多倍体/二倍体谱系中的位置，并为预测全基因组复制对许多其他植物谱系中环境变化的生态和进化反应的影响提供信息。这个项目将加速我们对多倍体如何带来成功的理解，以及它如何通过将多倍化的生态后果和基因组后果紧密联系在一起，在地理和进化范围内促进生物多样性。此外，这种对栽培草莓野生近缘的深度整合的比较研究将为一个具有世界经济重要性的物种提供基础知识。此外，这项研究将贡献无与伦比的资源，这些资源可能被用于确保草莓和相关作物(如樱桃、桃子、梨和苹果)在面临非生物胁迫时的可持续性。这项工作将通过广泛参与和国际合作，以及为中学生和本科生开设新的动手实践科学课程来促进培训。

All flowering plants are ancient and/or recent polyploids (possessing two or more copies of every chromosome as a result of whole genome duplication). This phenomenon is thought to be a main driver of biological adaptation and range expansion, yet exactly how polyploidy contributes to biodiversity, and which genomic mechanisms or functional traits underlie the success of polyploids, remain unanswered questions. The work will use the wild strawberry genus (Fragaria) to address long standing questions and test fundamental hypotheses. Through the use of deep phylogenetic and population genomic sampling combined with characterization of trait and gene expression under climatically diverse field gardens, the work will identify where functional/genetic diversity resides in a polyploid/diploid lineage, and inform efforts to predict the effect of whole genome duplication on ecological and evolutionary responses to environmental change in numerous other plant lineages. This project will accelerate our understanding of how polyploidy confers success, and how it contributes to biodiversity across geographic and evolutionary scales by tightly interlinking the ecological and genomic consequences of polyploidization. Moreover, this deeply integrated comparative study of the wild relatives of the cultivated strawberry will provide foundational knowledge on a species of world-wide economic importance. In addition, the research will contribute unparalleled resources that may be harnessed in efforts to ensure sustainability of strawberry and related crops such as cherry, peach, pear and apple, in the face of abiotic stress. The work will promote training by broad participation and international collaboration, and novel hands-on science curricula for middle school and undergraduate students.