OPUS: CRS: Comparative life history of microbes

该项目研究细菌和其他微生物（如酵母）的特性。近年来，科学家们在描述微生物如何在不同种类的食物上生长以及它们如何相互竞争方面取得了很大的进展。科学家们还描述了微生物影响人类和其他生物健康的许多方式。然而，科学家们对为什么不同的微生物在进食、相互竞争和影响其他生物体健康的方式上如此不同的理解要少得多。该项目的目标是研究自然界中塑造微生物特征的过程。这项新研究的这种理解将导致对微生物在以前没有研究过的栖息地中如何不同的具体预测。这些预测可以由研究这些问题的许多微生物学家进行测试，从而获得更好的科学见解，更有效地应对挑战，并改善资源管理。这项新的工作也将提供深入了解人类活动将如何可能改变这些微生物有机体的生物学，如此强烈地影响环境和生态系统的健康。这个项目将综合研究人员过去的理论工作的适应性和过去的应用到微生物与新的挑战所带来的经验进展。该项目将提供一系列关于微生物生活史的综合文章。每篇文章将统一的适应性和进化过程的概念框架与微生物性状的具体经验挑战。个别文章将集中在主题，如新陈代谢，铁载体，群体感应，交叉喂养，和消化。这个综合的比较预测将激励下一代的实证研究，以推动该主题超越其目前的局限性。这个奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并已被认为是值得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的支持。

This project studies the characteristics of bacteria and other microbes, such as yeast. In recent years, scientists have made great advances in describing how microbes grow on different kinds of food and how they compete with each other. Scientists have also described the many ways in which microbes affect the health of humans and other organisms. However, scientists understand much less about why different microbes have come to be so different in the ways in which they feed, compete with each other, and influence the health of other organisms. The goal of this project is to study the processes in nature that have shaped microbial characteristics. Such understanding from the new research will lead to specific predictions about how microbes are expected to differ when in habitats that have not previously been studied. Those predictions can be tested by the many microbiologists working on these problems, leading to better scientific insight, to more efficient response to challenges, and to improved management of resources. The new work will also provide insight into how human activities will likely alter the biology of these microbial organisms that so strongly affect the environment and the health of ecosystems.This project will synthesize the investigator’s past theoretical work on fitness and past applications to microbes with the novel challenges posed by recent empirical advances. The project will deliver a series of synthesis articles on microbial life history. Each article will unify the conceptual framework for fitness and evolutionary process with the specific empirical challenges for microbial traits. Individual articles will focus on topics such as metabolism, siderophores, quorum sensing, cross feeding, and exodigestion. The comparative predictions of this synthesis will motivate the next generation of empirical studies to advance the topic beyond its current limitations.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.