Collaborative Research: A Phylogenomic Study of a Hyper-Diverse Flowering Plant Lineage, Subfamily Lamioideae (Lamiaceae)

理解导致物种形成的进化过程仍然是生物学的一个基本挑战。薄荷科（Lamiaceae）是世界第六大开花植物科，在生态学、民族学和区系学上具有重要意义。在薄荷科中，第二大亚科，lamioid mint (Lamioideae)，作为探索植物多样化和进化辐射的全球模式，或在一个分支中物种数量的快速增加的一个很好的模型。本研究将使用高通量DNA测序技术来建立对层状薄荷进化关系的强大理解。这个项目的发现将对系统学家、进化生物学家和生态学家具有广泛的价值，因为它有助于缩小我们对植物如何多样化的基本理解的差距，包括早期开花植物的进化和新形成的栖息地（如火山岛）的殖民化。本项目收集的信息还将提高我们对类胺薄荷比较生物学的认识，指导新产品的发现，并有助于制定濒危物种的保护措施。该项目包含了广泛的教育和职业培训机会，包括高中教师，本科生，博士后研究员和早期职业女性教师。项目团队将举办有关类胺薄荷的公开研讨会，重点介绍他们的研究成果和更广泛的影响。该项目的一个重要组成部分是培养和指导本科生，来自密苏里西部州立大学的12名本科生将积极参与该项目的各个方面。叶状薄荷被分为13个部落，几乎是世界性的分布，大多数分类群在旧大陆发现，只有两个谱系在新世界和夏威夷群岛殖民。尽管这种广泛的分布和多样性，一个坚实的系统基因组框架，从多样化的模式和联系的变化，分布，生态和基因组动力学可以探索，仍然缺乏。该项目将利用下一代测序方法，包括靶向富集、转录组学和来自美国各地野外和植物标本室的广泛分类取样，建立一个强大的层状薄荷系统发育平台。主要研究目标如下：1)确定Lamioideae的主要分支及其相互关系，并进行必要的分类改变，包括确定由新世界成员Stachydeae和Synandreae组成的两个部落和基础部落Gomphostemmateae和Pogostemoneae的位置；2)估计关键进化事件的时间和多样化的速率；3)利用生物地理、全基因组和基因复制、性状性状进化等因素，将长尾亚科（特别是短尾亚科和短尾亚科）的多样性联系起来，以确定可能的关键创新和明显的形态特征重复进化。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，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。

Understanding the evolutionary processes that lead to speciation remains a fundamental challenge in biology. As the sixth largest flowering plant family, the mint family (Lamiaceae) is exceptionally important ecologically, ethnobotanically, and floristically. Within the mint family, the second largest subfamily, the lamioid mints (Lamioideae), serves as an excellent model for exploring global patterns of plant diversification and evolutionary radiation, or a rapid increase in the number of species in a clade. This research will use high throughput DNA sequencing technologies to build a robust understanding of evolutionary relationships in the lamioid mints. The findings from this project will be of broad value to systematists, evolutionary biologists, and ecologists by helping close gaps in our fundamental understanding of how plants diversify, including the evolution of early flowering plants and colonization of newly formed habitats, such as volcanic islands. Information gathered from this project will also improve our knowledge of the comparative biology of lamioid mints, guide new product discovery, and aid in the development of conservation measures for endangered species. This project incorporates extensive opportunities for education and career training at multiple levels, including high school teachers, undergraduate students, a postdoctoral researcher, and an early-career female faculty. The project team will offer public seminars about lamioid mints, highlighting their research findings and broader implications. An important component of this project is to train and mentor undergraduate students, and twelve undergraduate students from Missouri Western State University will become actively involved in various aspects of this project.The lamioid mints, which have been categorized into 13 tribes, have a near cosmopolitan distribution, with most taxa found in the Old World and only two lineages having colonized the New World and Hawaiian Islands. Despite this widespread distribution and diversity, a solid phylogenomic framework of the lamioid mints, from which patterns of diversification and links to shifts in distribution, ecology, and genome dynamics can be explored, is still lacking. This project will utilize next-generation sequencing approaches involving targeted enrichment, transcriptomics, and broad taxonomic sampling from field and herbaria across the US to build a robust phylogenetic platform of the lamioid mints. The following major goals will be accomplished: 1) Circumscribe the major clades of Lamioideae and their interrelationships and make necessary taxonomic changes, including determining the placement of the two tribes comprising New World members, Stachydeae and Synandreae, and the basal tribes, Gomphostemmateae and Pogostemoneae; 2) Estimate the timing of key evolutionary events and rates of diversification; 3) Link diversifications in Lamioideae, particularly within Stachydeae and Synandreae, with shifts in biogeography, whole genome and gene duplication, and character trait evolution to identify possible key innovations and apparent repeated evolution of morphological characters.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.