Collaborative Research: Evolution of Systems Biology Underlying Fruiting Body Development in Fungi

真菌是农作物和人类的重要病原体，也是维持森林健康的有益根协。大多数真菌缺乏主动移动的能力。取而代之的是，它们以菌丝的形式营养生长，然后利用风携带的孢子从一个地方传播到另一个地方。这个项目比较和对比了在不同环境中茁壮成长的真菌子实体的发育，考察了子实体结构如何适应各种环境。该项目将确定负责真菌子实体适应不同环境的基因。由此产生的对子实体结构的理解将为减少病原孢子的生存和传播的新的控制机制提供基础科学。拟议的项目将超越基础科学研究的进步，通过一个成功的外展项目来造福社会，该项目支持纽约市和费城当地城市高中的真菌子实体培养环境项目。此外，该项目将为当地学生提供真菌生物学课程，面向密歇根州三年级标准，以及密歇根州立大学4H儿童花园。基因表达的转移奠定了发育过程相互作用的基础，这些过程驱动组织的分化和多细胞生物体中新形态的进化。然而，研究这些相互作用的新特性如何导致新的、复杂的表型，从而阐明发育机制的进化过程，在复杂的生物体中是具有挑战性的。子囊菌门中的真菌包括许多重要的植物和动物病原体，它们为这些研究提供了模型系统，因为它们易于操作，在公共介质上形成具有一些良好特征的组织类型的果实结构，并且拥有能够进行比较和功能分析的基因组资源。这项拟议的研究将使用比较转录图谱和功能表征结合表型分析来揭示真菌子实体几种关键形态下的发育机制，并揭示这些形态创新在一系列真菌中产生和分化的进化过程。这项研究将揭示与生态位适应相关的更大范围的真菌子实体功能重要性的形态特征的遗传基础，并确定转录因子在两个模式物种--禾谷镰刀菌和粗粒真菌子实体发育进化中的作用和相互作用。作为对真菌发育差异的第一次系统生物学分析，这项研究将提供与微生物、植物和动物发育系统的著名例子的有洞察力的比较。通过研究这些不同的多细胞系统，我们更好地理解了影响发育生物学的制约因素和潜力。

Fungi are important pathogens of agricultural crops and humans, as well as beneficial root associates maintaining the health of our forests. Most fungi lack the ability to actively move. Instead, they grow vegetatively as hyphae, then spread from one location to another using spores that are carried by the wind. This project compares and contrasts the development of fruiting bodies of fungi that thrive in different environments, examining how fruiting body structure has adapted to a variety of environments. The project will identify genes that are responsible for adaptation of fungal fruiting bodies to different environments. The resulting understanding of fruiting body structure will yield basic science for novel control mechanisms that curtail the survival and dispersal of pathogenic spores. The proposed project will reach beyond the advancement of fundamental scientific research to benefit society by building on a successful outreach program that supports an environmental venture of fungal fruiting body cultivation at local urban high schools in New York City and Philadelphia. In addition, the project will bring fungal biology curricula to local students, addressing the Michigan state third grade standards, and to the MSU 4H Children's Garden.Shifts in gene expression underlie the interaction of developmental processes that drive the differentiation of tissues and the evolution of new morphologies in multicellular organisms. However, studies of how emergent properties of these interactions lead to novel, complex phenotypes that elucidate the evolutionary processes of developmental mechanisms are challenging in complex organisms. Fungi in the Phylum Ascomycota, a group that includes numerous important plant and animal pathogens, provide model systems for these studies as they are easily manipulated, develop fruiting structures with a few well-characterized tissue types on common media, and have genomic resources that enable comparative and functional analyses. The proposed research will use comparative transcriptional profiling and functional characterization coupled with phenotypic analyses to reveal developmental mechanisms underlying several key morphologies of fungal fruiting bodies, and to reveal the evolutionary processes by which these morphological innovations arose and diverged across a set of fungi. The research will reveal the genetic basis of a greater scope of morphological features of functional importance, associated with niche adaptation, for fungal fruiting bodies in the expanded six genera, and identify the roles and interactions of transcription factors in the evolution of the fruiting body development in two model species, F. graminearum and N. crassa. As the first systems biological analysis of developmental divergence in fungi, this research will provide an insightful comparison to well-known examples of developmental systems in microbes, plants, and animals. By studying these diverse multicellular systems, we gain a better understanding of the constraints and potentialities that shape developmental biology.