NSF Postdoctoral Fellowship in Biology FY 2021: Winners and losers: inter-individual variation in heat tolerance as a window into understanding how genotypes produce phenotypes

该行动资助了NSF 2021财年生物学博士后研究奖学金，即研究基因组、环境和表型之间相互作用的生命规则的综合研究。该研究金支持研究员的研究和培训，以创新的方式为生活规则领域做出贡献。气候变化正在全球范围内增加气温，导致世界各地的动物大规模灭绝。然而，一些生物体比其他生物体更能忍受这种变化的温度。为什么有些人可以在他们的一生中获得耐热性，使他们能够在极热的日子里生存，而其他人则不能相对未知。这项研究将使用贻贝作为一个实验系统，通过将贻贝在其栖息地中经历的温度与实验室中基因激活的变化联系起来，来了解生物体如何适应热量。研究结果将有助于阐明动物的栖息地如何影响它们在分子水平上适应高温的能力，通过研究个体和群体的反应。这些结果可以为哪些动物最容易受到与热有关的死亡率的影响以及如何保护这些物种提供见解。该研究员将通过每季度一次的“家长STEM培训日”和家长网站（资源工具），教育家长STEM职业以及如何最好地支持他们的孩子从事STEM，从而扩大妇女和代表性不足的少数群体对STEM的参与。虽然已知热应激可引起表观遗传变化，但尚不清楚这些表观遗传修饰是否实际上导致耐热表型，以及在没有额外热应激的情况下这些保护性修饰持续多久。因此，本研究的主要目的是：（1）通过长期的田间温度监测结合实验室存活测定来确定预测耐热表型的最重要的环境因素，以产生预测模型;（2）确定动物的环境如何影响它所经历的表观遗传修饰的大小，通过使用现场数据结合分子工作（使用转录组学和染色质可及性（ATACseq）分析）来理解这种因果关系;和（3）量化这些表观遗传修饰在没有热应激的情况下持续多久，以及这些适应性改变的持续时间是否与动物的热历史有关。通过在同一个体中使用重复的（血淋巴）采样，这些实验将开创热生物学的新领域，从而揭示个体和群体与环境相关的表观遗传反应的幅度和持续时间。总之，这些实验将回答热生物学中的基本问题，即动物的环境（热历史）如何改变其基因调控能力，以适应热环境并在极端高温事件中生存。培训目标包括学习建模（机器学习）、实地考察和分子生物学技术方面的新技能。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

This action funds an NSF Postdoctoral Research Fellowship in Biology for FY 2021, Integrative Research Investigating the Rules of Life Governing Interactions Between Genomes, Environment and Phenotypes. The fellowship supports research and training of the fellow that will contribute to the area of Rules of Life in innovative ways. Climate change is increasing temperatures globally, resulting in mass extinctions of animals all over the world. However, some organisms can tolerate this changing temperature much better than others. The reasons why some individuals can acquire heat tolerance during their lifetimes, allowing them to survive extremely hot days, whereas others cannot are relatively unknown. This research will use mussels as an experimental system to understand how organisms adapt to heat, by linking temperatures mussels experience in their habitat to changes in the activation of their genes in the lab. Findings will help elucidate how an animal’s habitat impacts their ability to adapt to the heat on a molecular level, through studying individual and group responses. These results can provide insights in to which animals might be most susceptible to heat-related mortality, and how to protect these species. The Fellow will broaden participation of women and underrepresented minorities in STEM through educating parents about STEM careers and how to best support their children in STEM, via quarterly “Parent STEM Training Days” and a website (resource tool) for parents. While it is known that heat stress can cause epigenetic changes, it is unclear whether these epigenetic modifications actually result in a heat tolerant phenotype, and furthermore, how long these protective modifications last in the absence of additional heat stress. Therefore, the main goals of this research are to (1) Pinpoint the most important environmental factors that predict the heat tolerant phenotype by using long-term field-temperature monitoring combined with laboratory survival assays to generate a predictive model; (2) Determine how an animal’s environment affects the magnitude of the epigenetic modifications that it undergoes, by using field data combined with molecular work (using transcriptomics and chromatin accessibility (ATACseq) assays) to understand this causal relationship; and (3) Quantify how long these epigenetic modifications last in the absence of heat stress, and whether the duration of these adaptive modifications are related to the animal’s thermal history. Through the use of repeated (hemolymph) sampling in the same individuals across time, these experiments will pioneer a new field of thermal biology, whereby the magnitude and duration of an individual’s and group’s epigenetic responses in relation to their environment will be uncovered. Altogether, these experiments will answer fundamental questions in thermal biology surrounding how an animal’s environment (thermal history) modifies its gene regulatory capacities to heat acclimate and survive extreme heat events. Training objectives include learning new skills in modeling (machine learning), fieldwork, and molecular biology techniques.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.