RUI: Evolutionary and ecological impacts of horizontal gene transfer in arthropods

生物如何获得新的特征是进化生物学的一个中心问题。我们知道，新的性状可能来自现有基因和染色体的突变和其他类型的变化。然而，原核生物，如细菌，也能够通过一种称为水平基因转移（HGT）的过程从其他细菌或其环境中获得全新的遗传信息和特征。这些水平转移的基因可以使细菌迅速适应新的环境。直到最近，人们还认为HGT只发生在细菌中。然而，在广泛的生物体中，包括真菌、植物和动物，已经记录了多个明显的HGT病例。该项目的目标是识别，验证和表征多种吸血和食草节肢动物物种中的HGT，包括两种生态和经济上重要的螨类。研究结果将扩大我们对HGT在真核生物中的广泛程度以及它如何促进其进化，多样化和利用新环境的能力的理解。这项研究将在斯佩尔曼学院进行，这是一所历史悠久的黑人女子学院。少数民族女本科生将参与该项目，并接受实践研究培训。还将培训一名教学和研究博士后研究员。外联活动包括为初中和高中学生编写教材，以及为期半天的教师培训活动。该项目旨在确定HGT是否在获得不同节肢动物物种入侵新生态位所需的趋同表型性状中发挥了作用。研究人员将验证，表征和策划先前在节肢动物中发现的HGT，并使用标准化方法确定共享HGT的患病率和程度。研究人员假设，HGT反复允许在多个远亲节肢动物物种中独立获得类似的新表型性状，并允许在这些物种中进行生态位入侵和新资源开发。生物信息学、转录组学和基因组学方法的组合将用于识别和验证15种节肢动物的HGT。由此产生的数据将被用来测试的预测，HGT共享的多个生态位共享物种，无论是吸血动物或食草动物，而没有更密切相关的，但非生态位共享物种。

How organisms acquire new traits is a central question in evolutionary biology. We know that new traits can arise from mutations and other types of changes to existing genes and chromosomes. However, prokaryotes, such as bacteria, are also able to acquire completely new genetic information and traits from other bacteria or from their environment through a process known as horizontal gene transfer (HGT). These horizontally transferred genes can allow bacteria to rapidly adapt to new environments. Until recently, it was thought that HGT happened only in bacteria. However, multiple apparent cases of HGT have been documented in a wide range of organisms, including the fungi, plants, and animals. The goal of this project is to identify, validate, and characterize HGTs in multiple blood-feeding and plant-eating arthropod species, including two species of ecologically and economically important mites. Results will expand our understanding of how widespread HGT is in eukaryotes and how it has contributed to their evolution, diversification, and ability to take advantage of new environments. The research will take place at Spelman College, an historically black all-women's college. Female minority undergraduate students will collaborate on the project and receive hands-on research training. A teaching and research post-doctoral fellow will also be trained. Outreach includes the development of educational materials for middle and high school students, and a half-day teacher training event. This project seeks to determine whether HGTs played a role in the acquisition of convergent phenotypic traits necessary for the invasion of novel niches by divergent arthropod species. The researchers will validate, characterize, and curate previously identified HGTs in arthropods and determine the prevalence and extent of shared HGTs, using a standardized methodology. The researchers hypothesize that HGT has repeatedly allowed for the independent acquisition of similar novel phenotypic traits in multiple distantly related arthropod species, and has allowed for niche invasion and novel resource exploitation in these species. A combination of bioinformatic, transcriptomic, and genomic approaches will be used to identify and validate HGTs across 15 arthropod species. Resulting data will be used to test the prediction that HGTs are shared by multiple niche-sharing species, either blood-feeders or herbivores, while being absent from more closely related, but non-niche sharing species.