Research Initiation Award: Search for the Epigenomic Mechanisms of Paternal Inheritance of Aggression in Social Honeybees

研究启动奖为历史上黑人学院和大学的初级和中级职业教师提供支持，他们正在建立新的研究项目或重新定向和重建现有项目。预计该奖项将有助于进一步提高教师的研究能力和效率，改善家庭机构的研究和教学，并使本科生参与研究经验。中央州立大学获得的这一奖项旨在确定蜜蜂攻击行为与其社会基因组之间的表观遗传修饰和表观基因组结构。为了研究通过亲本遗传的潜在印记机制，该项目将专注于非洲化和欧洲蜜蜂大脑中表观遗传标记的定量分析。现代表观转录组学和基因组学方法的使用将揭示行为表观基因组学的分子调控。这些研究将为表观遗传标记如何调节或连接到转录，基因调控或分子进化过程提供新的见解和第一个证据。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Research Initiation Awards provide support for junior and mid-career faculty at Historically Black Colleges and Universities who are building new research programs or redirecting and rebuilding existing programs. It is expected that the award helps to further the faculty member's research capability and effectiveness, improves research and teaching at the home institution, and involves undergraduate students in research experiences. The award to Central State University seeks to determine the epigenetic modifications and epigenomic architecture connecting aggressive behavior of honeybees to their sociogenome.To investigate the potential imprinting mechanisms via parental inheritance, the project will focus on the quantification analysis of epigenetic marks in the brain of Africanized and European honey bees. The use of modern epitranscriptomic and genomic approaches will reveal the molecular regulation of behavioral epigenomics. These studies will provide new insights and the first evidence of how epigenetic marks regulate or link to the process of transcription, gene regulation, or molecular evolution. A new field of behavioral epigenetics and epigenomics will also be developed using social honey bees as a model system.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.