Capacity: Biological Collections: Enhancement of the Caenorhabditis Natural Diversity Resource

对保守生物过程的研究需要与人类具有相同属性的模型生物。大多数模型生物很容易在实验室中生长，并能够进行实验操作。在过去的40年里，线虫秀丽线虫在遗传学、发育生物学和神经生物学方面取得了许多基础进展。然而，所有这些发现都来自对该物种单一基因株的研究。这一局限类似于这样一种观点，即我们可以通过研究我们物种中的一个人来理解所有人类生物学。该项目旨在扩大秀丽线虫自然多样性资源(CEDR)，其中包括来自世界各地的近2000个不同的遗传菌株，并创建线虫自然多样性资源(CaeNDR)，其中包括近2000个布氏线虫和700多个热带线虫菌株。这种组合的遗传多样性有助于发现生理和行为特征的进化，包括对化学和生物胁迫的反应。由于人类与这种线虫物种共享许多相同的基因和过程，使用这些生物的研究可以告诉我们许多关于人类种群如何变化和进化如何工作的知识。CaeNDR有三个主要目标：(1)收集、组织和传播野生线虫菌株；(2)组织和传播野生菌株的全基因组序列和变异数据；以及(3)提供一个遗传学门户网站，以便于绘制和解释结果。该项目将进一步提高CaeNDR的能力，方法是扩大菌株集并使其易于向社区传播，为现有的CaeNDR基因组资源增加新的工具和可扩展性，并在更新和重新设计的网站(CaeNDR.org)上发布三个线虫物种的所有数据，对安全性、基础设施成本以及用户界面和体验进行重大改进。研究人员将利用线虫和热带线虫扩大线虫广泛的CaeNDR用户基础，从而允许在线虫属之间采用新的比较方法。大多数研究小组没有实验、计算和统计训练的组合，无法轻松地进行自然变异研究。该项目将使这些工具可供不同模式生物体社区的大量研究实验室使用。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。

Studies of conserved biological processes require model organisms that share attributes with humans. Most model organisms are easily grown in the laboratory and enable experimental manipulations. Over the last forty years, the nematode worm Caenorhabditis elegans has been instrumental in numerous fundamental advances in genetics, developmental biology, and neurobiology. However, all of these discoveries come from studies of a single genetic strain of the species. This limitation is similar to the argument that we can understand all of human biology by the study of a single person in our species. This project seeks to expand the C. elegans Natural Diversity Resource (CeNDR), which includes nearly 2,000 genetically distinct strains from across the world, and create the Caenorhabditis Natural Diversity Resource (CaeNDR), incorporating almost 2,000 C. briggsae and more than 700 C. tropicalis strains. This combined genetic diversity facilitates discoveries about the evolution of physiological and behavioral traits, including responses to chemical and biotic stresses. Because humans share many of the same genes and processes as this nematode species, studies using these organisms can teach us a great deal about how the human population varies and how evolution works.CaeNDR has three major goals: (1) Collect, organize, and disseminate wild Caenorhabditis strains; (2) Organize and disseminate whole-genome sequence and variant data for wild strains; and (3) Provide a genetics portal to facilitate mappings and interpretations of results. The project will further increase the capacity of CaeNDR by expanding the set of strains and preparing them for easy dissemination to the community, adding new tools and extensibility to existing CaeNDR genomic resources, and releasing all of the data for the three Caenorhabditis species on an updated and redesigned website (CaeNDR.org) with critical improvements to security, infrastructure costs, and user interface and experience. The extensive CaeNDR user-base from C. elegans will be amplified by researchers using C. briggsae and C. tropicalis, allowing for novel comparative approaches across the Caenorhabditis genus. Most research groups do not have the combination of experimental, computational, and statistical training to easily perform studies of natural variation. This project will make these tools available and usable by a large number of research laboratories across diverse model organism communities.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.