Collaborative Research: Ecological and evolutionary impacts of disrupted transmission on host-microbiome associations

生活在生物体内或生物体上的微生物群对该生物体的健康至关重要。它影响一切，从生长发育到行为，再到疾病易感性。生物体如何在其发育过程中获得尽可能好的微生物群是其一生健康和繁殖成功的关键。然而，我们对微生物在个体之间传播的过程如何影响生物体健康知之甚少。当建立对干扰微生物在个体之间的转移可能产生的影响的预测时，这种知识差距变得尤为重要。例如，一直有关于剖腹产如何减少微生物区系从母亲传给后代的讨论，在农业中有许多常见的做法，如种子绝育或轮作，这可能会影响与植物相关的微生物的世代移动。这项研究项目将重点放在番茄--一种典型的农业作物--如何获得微生物群方面的差异所造成的后果。它将比较垂直传播，从父母传给后代，或水平传播，在无关的生物之间，如何影响微生物组的建立、适应和功能。这项工作的结果将与更好地结合植物微生物群对作物产量的潜在有用作用的农业实践的发展有关。来自代表性不足群体的本科生也将参与该项目，研究人员还将与当地教师合作，根据这项研究创建教材。这项拟议的工作使用一个模型番茄植物-叶圈(叶相关)微生物组系统来确定微生物组在世代之间中断传递对宿主-微生物组相互作用的短期(生态)和长期(进化)后果。通过操纵来自亲本植物的微生物群与来自无关植物的微生物群定殖的可能性，这项工作将直接测试传播方式对微生物组演替动态、适应和功能的影响。微生物实验进化、独立于培养的测序和元基因组分析的结合将允许在微生物组的传播方式和叶圈微生物区系的分类和功能多样性之间建立因果联系。这项实证工作将得到关于垂直微生物群传播如何影响宿主-微生物群共同进化的理论的补充。总之，这项工作将确定垂直传播在塑造宿主-微生物群相互作用方面的重要性。这一奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

The microbiome living in or on an organism is critical to that organism's health. It influences everything from growth and development to behavior to disease susceptibility. How an organism gets the best possible microbiome during its development is key to its lifetime health and reproductive success. However, we know very little about how the processes by which microbiomes are transmitted among individuals affects organism health. This knowledge gap becomes especially important when building predictions about how interfering in the transfer of microbes between individuals might matter. For example, there has been discussion of how caesarean section birth might reduce the transmission of microbiota from mother to offspring, and in agriculture there are numerous common practices, such as sterilization of seeds or crop rotation, that likely impact the movement of plant-associated microbes across generations. This research project will focus on the consequences of differences in how tomatoes, a model agricultural crop, get their microbiomes. It will compare how vertical transmission, from parent to offspring, or horizontal transmission, among unrelated organisms, affects microbiome establishment, adaptation, and function. The outcomes of this work will be relevant to the development of agricultural practices that better incorporate the potentially useful role of the plant microbiome for crop yield. Undergraduate students from underrepresented groups will also be involved in the project, and researchers will also work with local teachers to create teaching materials based on the research. The proposed work uses a model tomato plant - phyllosphere (leaf associated) microbiome system to determine both the short term (ecological) and longer-term (evolutionary) consequences of interrupted microbiome transmission between generations on host-microbiome interactions. By manipulating the likelihood that seedlings will be colonized by microbiota coming from parental plants versus unrelated plants, the work will directly test the impact of transmission mode on microbiome successional dynamics, adaptation, and function. The combination of microbial experimental evolution, culture-independent sequencing, and metagenomic analyses will allow for a causal link to be established between microbiome transmission mode and the taxonomic and functional diversity of phyllosphere microbiota. The empirical work will be complemented by theory on how vertical microbiome transmission affects host-microbiome coevolution. Together, the work will determine the importance of vertical transmission in shaping host-microbiome interactions.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.