BII-Design: Integrating Biological Resilience Across Scales

弹性的概念-任何系统在扰动后恢复到先前状态的能力-提供了一个理想的机会来统一不同规模的生物学研究。 科学研究的日益专业化，使得生物学不同领域的研究人员交流思想成为一项挑战。然而，系统恢复力的研究是所有生物学研究领域的共同点。 该项目的总体目标是利用弹性的主题，通过综合不同研究领域使用的工具，概念和方法，来弥合生物学的细胞，有机体和社区层面的规模。他们将通过1）合作研究，包括本科生，研究生，博士后和教师，2）课程丰富，和3）推广到其他机构，非营利组织和行业整合。通过这些活动确定的恢复力的保守机制将适用于在医学，农业，工业和自然环境中设计和管理生物系统。该项目将挑战科学家跨越学科，分类学，方法学和生物学的其他分歧，以建立和应用生物恢复力的统一框架。生物学的许多领域都在其研究系统中描述了弹性，但很少有综合性的努力来寻找跨时空尺度的弹性的共同模式和过程。该项目的第一步是研究如何在生物尺度上实施现有的复原力模型和指标。第二步是确定是否有跨尺度的共同机制，使生物系统保持弹性。最后一步将是确定生物弹性的基础科学如何用于设计和管理细胞，有机体和生态系统。将通过生物复原力部门间研讨会、生物复原力区域专题讨论会、生物复原力新研究生单元和生物复原力研究生研究金来审查这些复原力领域。 研究人员将仔细检查和完善现有的生物弹性词汇，可以广泛采用其他生物学家和综合生物学研究机构。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。

The concept of resilience - the ability of any system to return to a previous state after a perturbation – provides an ideal opportunity to unite different scales of biological research. The ever-increasing specialization of scientific research has made it challenging for researchers in different fields of biology to exchange ideas. The study of system resilience, however, is common to all biological fields of study. The overarching objective of this project is to use the theme of resilience to bridge cellular, organismal, and community-level scales of biology by synthesizing the tools, concepts, and approaches used by the different research fields. They will be integrated through 1) collaborative research that includes undergraduates, graduate students, postdocs, and faculty, 2) curricular enrichment, and 3) outreach to other institutions, non-profits, and industry. Conserved mechanisms of resilience identified through these activities will be applicable to engineer and manage biological systems in medical, agricultural, industrial, and natural contexts.This project will challenge scientists to span disciplinary, taxonomic, methodological, and other divides in biology to build and apply a unified framework for biological resilience. Many fields of biology have described resilience in their systems of study, but rarely are there integrative efforts to search for common patterns and processes of resilience across temporal and spatial scales. The first step of the project is to examine how existing models and metrics of resilience are implemented across biological scales. The second step is to determine if there are common mechanisms across scales that allow biological systems to maintain resilience. The final step will be to identify how the basic science of biological resilience can be used to design and manage cellular, organismal, and ecological systems. These areas of resilience will be examined through interdepartmental seminars in biological resilience, a regional symposium on biological resilience, a new graduate module on biological resilience, and graduate research fellowships in biological resilience. The investigators will carefully examine and refine the existing lexicon for biological resilience that can be widely adopted by other biologists and integrative biology research institutions.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.