PRFB FY 2021: Disentangling a Genetic Paradox: Leveraging European Green Crabs to Examine Genomic and Plastic Contributions to Thermal Tolerance

该行动资助了美国国家科学基金会2022财年生物学博士后研究奖学金，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。该奖学金支持将以创新方式对生活规则领域作出贡献的研究员的研究和培训。欧洲绿蟹（Carcinus maenas）是世界上最成功的海洋入侵物种之一，部分原因是它们能够在一系列温度下茁壮成长。在北美西海岸，入侵的绿蟹通过与本地蟹的竞争，捕食幼体贝类和破坏苗圃鳗草床，对商业贝类生产和部落食物主权重要的物种产生负面影响。为了准确预测和防止进一步的传播和损害，了解帮助该物种耐受温度变化的因素是很重要的。这项工作将揭示遗传和环境因素如何影响单个螃蟹的温度耐受性。该研究员将通过为大波士顿地区资源不足的学校开发有关遗传学和海洋入侵的课程，扩展之前在正义、多样性、公平和包容方面的工作。西海岸麻蝇种群的特点是遗传多样性大大低于其原生地。最近发现的一个与耐热性密切相关的氨基酸突变的超基因（一起遗传的基因块）表明，在群体水平上，C. maenas的耐热性具有遗传基础。虽然种群水平的热性能差异很重要，但它们可能掩盖影响热耐受性的表型塑性性状的个体差异。该研究员将对成年maenas的全动物热生理学、转录组学和代谢组学进行配对，以解开与适应可塑性和适应性进化相关的热反应变化。通过利用高通量测序技术（如非靶向转录组学和代谢组学）提供的机制理解，该研究员将阐明温度对分子生理学的影响，这些影响可能不容易通过单独的生物体反应指标观察到。通过这些方法鉴定的分子重编程将证明个体水平的耐热性如何有助于群体应激反应。这项研究将量化个体的热耐受性变化，并为剖析可塑性-适应性相互作用的机制基础创建一个框架。这些方法可以应用于其他系统，并将扩大研究员的研究广度。该研究员将为来自历史上被排除在海洋科学领域的本科生提供有偿研究机会，从而培养学生在生态生理学和分子生物学方面的能力，同时也培养该研究员成为一名成功教授所必需的指导技能。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。

This action funds an NSF Postdoctoral Research Fellowship in Biology for FY 2022, 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. European green crabs (Carcinus maenas) are one of the world’s most successful marine invasive species, due in part to their ability to thrive across a range of temperatures. On the North American West Coast, invasive green crabs negatively impact species important for commercial shellfish production and tribal food sovereignty through competition with native crabs, predation of juvenile shellfish, and destruction of nursery eelgrass beds. In order to accurately predict and prevent further spread and damages, it is important to understand the factors that help this species tolerate temperature changes. This work will uncover how genetic and environmental factors contribute to an individual crab’s temperature tolerance. The fellow will expand on previous justice, diversity, equity, and inclusion work by developing lessons about genetics and marine invasions for under-resourced schools in the Greater Boston area. West Coast C. maenas populations are characterized by substantially lower genetic diversity than in their native range. Recent discovery of a supergene (block of genes inherited together) with amino acid-changing mutations strongly associated with thermal tolerance suggests a genetic basis for C. maenas thermotolerance at a population level. While population-level differences in thermal performance are important, they can obscure the individual variation in phenotypically plastic traits that influences thermotolerance. The fellow will pair whole-animal thermal physiology, transcriptomics, and metabolomics in adult C. maenas to disentangle thermal response variation associated with acclimatory plasticity and adaptive evolution. By leveraging the mechanistic understanding provided by high-throughput sequencing technologies such as untargeted transcriptomics and metabolomics, the fellow will elucidate impacts of temperature on molecular physiology that may not be easily observed by whole-organism response metrics alone. Molecular reprogramming identified by these methods will demonstrate how individual-level thermotolerance contributes to population stress responses. This research will quantify individual thermal tolerance variation and create a framework for dissecting the mechanistic underpinnings of plasticity-adaptation interactions. The methods can be applied to other systems, and will expand the fellow’s research breadth. The fellow will providing paid research opportunities for undergraduate students from historically excluded groups in ocean sciences, thus training students in ecophysiology and molecular biology while also developing mentorship skills necessary for the fellow to be a successful professor.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.