OPUS: Synthesizing field data in a genomic context to elucidate the evolution of phenotypic plasticity and local adaptation

一个植物物种是如何在大范围的气候中生存、生长和繁殖的？植物对气候变化的耐受性的遗传基础是什么？解决这些问题对于林业工作者和作物科学家来说至关重要，他们希望在不同的气候条件下选择合适的高产品种，并确保国家的粮食供应。 这些答案对于预测受威胁的植物种群是否能在环境变化中持续存在，或者引入的物种是否会在新的范围内成为入侵者也很重要。 此外，了解对可变环境的适应机制是进化生物学的一个基本问题。 遗传模式植物拟南芥（通用名称：塔勒cress）提供了一个独特的机会来解决这个问题，通过综合实地测量，基因组数据和地理信息，如本项目所述。这些结果将对从植物发育生物学家和种群遗传学家到植物生态学家和林业学家的广泛科学家有价值。 该项目将为研究生提供新的跨学科研究培训，所有数据将公开发布，为进一步分析和综合提供社区资源。该研究项目将利用A. thaliana，其中起源于横跨欧亚大陆的天然范围的不同气候的数百种基因型在横跨欧亚大陆和北美的六个地点的共同花园中一起生长，沿着开花时间途径中的已知突变体。 这些独特的表型数据将与新获得的基因组数据相结合，以研究复杂生活史性状的遗传基础和适应性进化，如开花和表型可塑性（不同环境中相同基因型表达的性状值范围）。该项目将有三个目标：1）阐明复杂生活史性状的基因组基础及其在不同自然季节环境中的可塑性。 2)评估自然选择对生活史性状的影响，以了解表型可塑性如何影响植物在不同气候条件下的表现。3)结合联合收割机的定量遗传和人口基因组数据，以测试过去的适应性分歧和气候适应的塑料生活史特征的签名。这些综合分析将发表在几篇相互关联的科学论文中。 该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

How does a plant species persist, grow, and reproduce across a wide range of climates? What is the genetic basis of plant tolerance to climate variation? Addressing these questions is critical for foresters and crop scientists seeking to select appropriate varieties for high yield in different climates and assuring the nation's food supply. The answers are also important for predicting whether threatened plant populations can persist in the face of environmental change, or whether introduced species will become invasive in their new range. Understanding mechanisms of adaptation to variable environments is, moreover, a fundamental problem in evolutionary biology. The genetic model plant Arabidopsis thaliana (common name: thale cress) provides a unique opportunity to address this problem by synthesizing field measurements, genomic data, and geographic information, as outlined in this project. The results will be valuable to a wide range of scientists, from plant developmental biologists and population geneticists to plant ecologists and foresters. The project will provide novel interdisciplinary research training for a graduate student, and all of the data will be publicly released to provide a community resource for further analysis and synthesis. The research project will leverage data from field experiments with A. thaliana in which hundreds of genotypes originating in diverse climates across the native Eurasian range were grown together in common gardens in six sites across Eurasia and North America, along with known mutants in flowering time pathways. These unique phenotypic data will be integrated with newly available genomic data to investigate the genetic basis and adaptive evolution of complex life history traits such as flowering and phenotypic plasticity (the range of trait values expressed by the same genotype across different environments). The project will have three objectives: 1) Elucidate the genomic basis of complex life history traits and their plasticity in different natural seasonal environments. 2) Estimate natural selection on life history traits to understand how phenotypic plasticity contributes to plant performance in different climates. 3) Combine quantitative genetic and population genomic data to test for a signature of past adaptive divergence and climate adaptation in plastic life history traits. These synthetic analyses will be published in several interrelated scientific papers. Resulting insights will be further integrated with results of previous research in two major conceptual review papers.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.