EAPSI: Adapting Japanese silkmoth rearing techniques to answer evolutionary questions

蝴蝶和蛾子的繁殖生物学不同于许多其他动物，原因尚不清楚。这些昆虫在没有DNA的情况下产生大量的精子，而DNA不可能使卵子受精。这样的细胞似乎是对资源的浪费，因此应该通过自然选择来移除，但它们并没有这样做。该奖项支持与日本国家农业生物科学研究所的Hideki Sezutsu博士合作，学习其他地方无法解决这一谜团的日本蚕蛾育种技术。实验将在Suzetsu实验室进行，在蚕蛾身上进行，结果将在美国本土蝴蝶和飞蛾身上得到证实。所获得的见解将有助于生殖生物学的重要理论讨论，并可能被应用于帮助保护在农业上具有重要意义的传粉者。日本研究人员已经制定了蚕蛾人工授精的方案。这项技术将允许研究人员改变雌性蚕蛾接受的精子的数量和种类。在缺乏脱氧核糖核酸的精子发挥作用的假设下，它们在受精过程中的缺失会对雌性卵子的受精率产生负面影响？？S卵子。从这项实验中获得的见解将被用来更彻底地测试这种新型精子类型在其他飞蛾和蝴蝶身上的功能假说，研究人员将与其他国内昆虫生物学家分享这些技术，为生殖生物学领域的工作开辟新的途径。该NSF EAPSI奖是为一名美国研究生提供的奖学金，由日本科学促进会共同资助。

The reproductive biology of butterflies and moths differs from many other animals for reasons that remain unclear. These insects make vast quantities of sperm with no DNA which cannot possibly fertilize eggs. Such cells appear to be a waste of resources, and thus should be removed by natural selection, but they have not been. This award supports a collaboration with Dr. Hideki Sezutsu of the National Institute of Agrobiological Sciences in Japan to learn Japanese silkmoth breeding techniques practiced nowhere else that can address this mystery. Experiments will be conducted in the Suzetsu lab on silkmoths and results will be confirmed in the United States with native butterflies and moths. Insights gained will contribute to an important theoretical discussion in reproductive biology and may be applied to aid conservation of agriculturally important pollinators. Japanese researchers have developed protocols for artificial insemination in silkmoths. This technique will allow the researcher to vary the amount and kind of sperm female silkmoths receive. Under the hypothesis that DNA-lacking sperm have a functional role, their absence in an insemination should negatively impact the fertility of a female?s eggs. Insight gained from this experiment will be used to more thoroughly test hypotheses for the function of this novel sperm type in other moths and butterflies and the researcher will share these techniques with other domestic insect biologists to advance open new avenues for work in the field of reproductive biology. This NSF EAPSI award is a fellowship to a U.S. graduate student and is funded in collaboration with the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science.