CAREER: How plant genotype and environmental factors jointly influence the structure of microbial communities and plant health

该奖项的全部或部分资金来自《2021年美国救援计划法案》(公法117-2)。了解寄主生物体和它们居住的微生物群落如何相互作用是生物学中的一个核心挑战，涉及从农业到人类健康的广泛影响。一个主要的问题是，是什么因素和机制塑造了微生物群落的组成。一个相关的问题是微生物群落的结构是否以及如何影响宿主。这个项目通过关注不同的环境因素，结合宿主的遗传变异，如何塑造微生物群落的组成和功能影响来解决这两个问题。这项工作将利用杨树中已建立的、高度可及的植物-真菌共生关系，在这种共生关系中，叶内生真菌已知具有疾病保护作用。一个互补的教育项目将通过学生主导的工作来丰富和拓宽研究，调查普通花园和温室实验中内生菌群落结构的驱动因素的季节性变化。总体而言，这个职业项目将加深我们对环境和基因如何影响植物内生菌群落和疾病保护的理解，同时促进STEM领域的多样性，并在面临气候变化的情况下促进保护和作物生产。植物及其相关微生物群落之间的相互作用已知对环境敏感，但这种变化的潜在驱动因素尚不清楚。这个职业项目测试了机械性假设，即植物基因如何与环境中不同的、非生物和生物成分相互作用，从而引起相关微生物群落的变化。这项工作将在棉杨模式系统(杨树)中进行，在该系统中，寄主遗传学、叶真菌和不同的环境因素可以被精确控制和量化。第一个目标是测试不同的环境因素和植物基因如何共同影响真菌叶片内生真菌群落的组成。第二个目标是了解内生菌群落结构如何影响植物，特别是检验内生菌群落中不断增加的系统发育多样性为寄主植物提供更高程度的疾病保护这一假设。第三个目标通过测试特定的植物性状(角质蜡的水平)如何影响内生菌群落结构，从而间接影响疾病易感性，将前两个目标联系起来。通过阐明寄主对有益真菌的控制对环境的敏感性，这一职业项目的结果将为全球保护植物生物多样性和可持续种植作物以满足日益增长的人口的努力提供信息。该项目的教育部分将为不同的高中生、本科生和研究生提供研究机会，并提供博士后奖学金。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

This award is funded in whole or in part under the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 (Public Law 117- 2). Understanding how host organisms and their resident microbial communities interact is a central challenge in biology, with broad implications ranging from agriculture to human health. A primary question is what factors and mechanisms shape the composition of microbial communities. A related issue is whether and how the structure of microbial communities affects the host. This project addresses these two questions by focusing on how distinct environmental factors, in combination with host genetic variation, shape the composition and functional influence of microbial communities. The work will take advantage of an established, highly accessible plant-fungal symbiosis in Populus, in which leaf endophytes are known to confer disease protection. A complementary educational program will enrich and broaden the research through student-led work investigating seasonal variation in the drivers of endophyte community structure in common gardens and in greenhouse experiments. Overall, this CAREER project will deepen our understanding of how environment and genotype affect endophyte communities and disease protection in plants, while promoting diversity in a STEM field and contributing to conservation and crop production in the face of climate change.Interactions between plants and their associated microbial communities are known to be sensitive to the environment, but the underlying drivers of this variation are poorly understood. This CAREER project tests mechanistic hypotheses for how plant genotypes interact with distinct, abiotic and biotic components of the environment to give rise to variation in associated microbial communities. This work will be conducted in the cottonwood model system (Populus trichocarpa), in which host genetics, leaf fungi, and distinct environmental factors can be precisely controlled and quantified. The first objective tests how distinct environmental factors and plant genotype jointly influence the composition of fungal leaf endophyte communities. The second objective is to understand how endophyte community structure affects plants, specifically testing the hypothesis that increasing phylogenetic diversity in an endophyte community provides the host plant with a higher degree of disease protection. The third objective connects the prior two objectives by testing how a particular plant trait (the level of cuticular wax) influences endophyte community structure, thereby indirectly affecting disease susceptibility. By elucidating the environmental sensitivity of host control over beneficial fungi, the results of this CAREER project will inform global efforts to conserve plant biodiversity and to sustainably grow crops for a growing human population. The educational components of the project will provide research opportunities to a diverse group of high school, undergraduate and graduate students, and a postdoctoral scholar.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.