Dimensions US-China: Collaborative Research: Functional Genomics and Experimental Endosymbiont Replacements in Lice.

进化是一个优化生物体内基因功能的过程，以促进在竞争和环境变化中的生存。虽然进化通常是发明的引擎，但它也在精简方面发挥着重要作用，确保生物体不会浪费资源来维持或操作多余的功能。许多动物和植物已经进化出与微生物的共生关系，以便获得它们自己的基因组库所不能提供的功能。参与这些协会的微生物经历了一个戏剧性的转变，从一个自主的生活方式，其中他们的植物或动物宿主提供了他们的许多需求。共生提供了自然界最有效的进化精简机会之一，往往导致超过90%的祖先微生物基因功能的丧失。 这项研究的重点是了解羽毛喂养的鸟虱细菌共生体的进化流线型的过程。这些共生体（分别）从几乎相同的伴侣进化了许多次，这些伴侣已经殖民了不同的鸟类，但具有相同的共生功能。对于研究进化过程来说，这是一个罕见的、非常珍贵的场景，因为高水平的重复为随机变化和偶然性的作用提供了独特的见解。这项研究还将为中美两国学生和研究人员之间的科学整合提供一个框架，沿着一个夏季“SIM-biosis”夏令营，该夏令营将培训7- 9年级的学生开发计算机模拟，以破译进化过程的模式和模式。 该项目的重点是了解亲密和相互依存的共生关系如何起源，功能和共同进化。虽然许多昆虫（沿着其他动物和植物）已经进化出与细菌的共生关系，促进重要的新性状的获得，该项目的重点是羽毛喂养的鸟虱，它反复和独立地进化出与细菌的共生关系，以获得在其羽毛角蛋白饮食中缺乏的必需B族维生素。这些虱子异常统一和简化的生活方式提供了一个独特的机会，研究在类似条件下重复获得共生体的进化结果。该项目探讨了（i）漂移和偶然性在共生细菌基因组进化和退化过程中的作用，以及（ii）综合功能的性质和机制基础。该项目使用由机器学习/人工智能算法支持的新型比较基因组方法来检测高度复制的基因组数据集中的重复模式，这些数据集有效地代表了虱子共生进化的重放。这将产生高度详细的洞察到分子进化过程和适应的特点共生，此外，进化促进基因组精简的机制在nature.This award reflects NSF的法定使命，并已被认为是值得的支持，通过评估使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响审查标准.

Evolution is a process that optimizes the functions of genes within an organism to facilitate survival in the face of competition and environmental change. While evolution often serves as an engine of invention, it also plays an important role in streamlining, ensuring that organism do not waste resources maintaining or operating superfluous functions. Many animals and plants have evolved symbiotic relationships with microbes in order to gain access to functions that their own genomic inventories do not provide. Microbes participating in these associations experience a dramatic shift from an autonomous lifestyle to one in which their plant or animal host provides many of their needs. Symbiosis provides one of nature's most potent opportunities for evolutionary streamlining, often resulting in the loss of over 90% of ancestral microbial gene functions. This research focuses on understanding the process of evolutionary streamlining in bacterial symbionts of feather-feeding bird lice. These symbioses have evolved (separately) many times from near-identical partners that have colonized different birds but have the same symbiotic functionality. This is a rare and highly prized scenario for the study of an evolutionary process because the high level of repetition provides unique insight into the roles of random change and contingency. This research will also provide a framework for science integration between Chinese and US students and researchers, along with a summer "SIM-biosis" camp that will train 7-9th grade students to develop computer simulations that can decipher the modes and patterns of evolutionary processes. This project focuses on understanding how intimate and interdependent symbiotic relationships originate, function, and co-evolve. While many insects (along with other animals and plants) have evolved symbiotic relationships with bacteria that facilitate the acquisition of important new traits, this project focuses on feather-feeding bird lice, which have repeatedly and independently evolved symbiotic relationships with bacteria to obtain essential B-vitamins that are lacking in their diet of feather keratin. The unusually uniform and simplified lifestyle of these lice presents a unique opportunity to study the evolutionary outcome of repeated acquisition of symbionts under similar conditions. This project explores (i) the role of drift and contingency in shaping the processes of genome evolution and degeneration in symbiotic bacteria, and (ii) the nature and mechanistic basis of integrated functionality. The project uses novel comparative genomic approaches underpinned by machine learning/artificial intelligence algorithms to detect repeating patterns in highly-replicated genomic datasets that effectively represent replays of symbiosis evolution in lice. This will yield highly detailed insight into the molecular evolutionary processes and adaptations that characterize symbiosis and, moreover, the mechanism by which evolution facilitates genomic streamlining in nature.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.