NSF Postdoctoral Fellowship in Biology FY 2021: Developmental Patterning of Double-Layered Epithelia and the Evolutionary Origin of Insect Wings

这项行动资助了2021财年的NSF生物学博士后研究奖学金，扩大了生物学中代表性不足的群体的参与。该研究金支持研究员的一项研究和培训计划，该计划将增加在生物学领域代表性不足的群体的参与。该研究员的研究目的是测试身体不同部位的相似结构是否是使用不同昆虫的相似发育指令建立的。 研究员将通过观察这些昆虫的基因表达来实现这一目标。这些结果与一个争论了数百年的问题有关：昆虫的翅膀是如何进化的？与蝙蝠和鸟类等有飞行能力的脊椎动物不同，昆虫的翅膀不是简单的肢体衍生物，而是一种没有明确进化历史的新特征。这项研究计划不仅可以让被认定为残疾科学家的研究员获得新技能，还可以培养一批属于生物学代表性不足群体的本科生。这批学生将通过四个学期的积极学习社区课程进行指导，在那里他们将在支持性的环境中学习理论和实验室技能，然后在第四学期结束时旋转完成他们选择的独立研究。这将反过来设置这些不同的学生，研究员，在未来的生物研究领域取得成功。不同的结构已经被假设为连续同源昆虫翅膀，从前胸叶，腹鳃，腿节。最近评估这些进化关系的努力依赖于从果蝇工作中鉴定出的翅膀基因，但这些基因尚未在与翅膀相同的组织类型组成的其他特征中进行评估：双层上皮（DLE）。该研究员的工作将评估这些基因在由相同组织类型组成的结构中所起的作用，这些结构与翅膀不连续同源。因此，研究员将测试翅膀起源的发展假说的假设，共享使用这个网络表明与翅膀的系列同源性。此外，很少有工作已经完成的作用，这些翅膀基因发挥的翅膀或其他DLE结构的发育模式，在许多血统，分离甲壳类动物从holometabolous昆虫，一个空白的研究员的工作旨在填补。拟议中的实验将测试翅膀基因的表达和功能是否真的是翅膀独有的，或者它们是否更广泛地指示了双层上皮结构的发育模式。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并被认为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来支持。

This action funds an NSF Postdoctoral Research Fellowship in Biology for FY 2021, Broadening Participation of Groups Under-represented in Biology. The Fellowship supports a research and training plan for the Fellow that will increase the participation of groups underrepresented in biology. The research aim of the Fellow is to test whether similar structures that occur on different parts of the body are built using similar developmental instructions in diverse insects. The Fellow will accomplish this by looking at the gene expression within these insects. The results are relevant to a question that has been debated for hundreds of years: how did insect wings evolve? Unlike flighted vertebrates such as bats and birds, insect wings are not simple derivations of a limb, but rather a novel feature with no clear path of evolutionary history. This research program will not only allow the Fellow, who identifies as a Disabled scientist, to gain new skills, it dovetails with a program to train a cohort of undergraduate students that belong to Groups Under-represented in Biology. This cohort of students will be mentored through an active learning community course over four semesters where they will learn theory and lab skills in a supportive environment before rotating out to complete independent research of their choice at the end of the fourth semester. This will in turn set these diverse students, and Fellow, up for success in future biological research fields. Different structures have been hypothesized to be serially homologous to insect wings, from pronotal lobes, to abdominal gills, to leg segments. Recent efforts to evaluate these evolutionary relationships have relied on wing genes identified from Drosophila work, but these genes have not been assessed across other features comprised of the same tissue type as the wing: double-layered epithelia (DLE). The Fellow’s work will assess the role these genes play in structures made of the same tissue type that are not serially homologous to the wing. Thus, the Fellow will test the assumption of developmental hypotheses on the origin of wings that shared use of this network indicates serial homology with wings. Moreover, little work has been done on the role these wing genes play in developmental patterning of the wings or other DLE structures in the many lineages that separate crustaceans from holometabolous insects, a gap the Fellow’s work aims to fill. The proposed experiments will test if the expression and function of wing genes is truly unique to wings or if they are more broadly indicative of developmental patterning of double-layered epithelial structures.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.