NSF PRFB FY 2023: Connecting physiological and cellular aging to individual quality in a long-lived free-living mammal.

这一行动为NSF 2023财年生物学博士后研究奖学金提供了资金，综合研究调查了支配基因组、环境和表型之间相互作用的生命规则。该奖学金支持研究员的研究和培训，这些研究员将以创新的方式为生活规则领域做出贡献。生物体在特定环境中繁殖的能力(适合度)在种群中并不均匀分布。有不同的预测认为，投资于当前的繁殖是以生存和未来繁殖为代价的。一种名为个体质量框架的假说表明，一些个体表现出更高的“质量”，繁殖更有效，存活时间更长。这些“高质量”个体可能更有能力经受住不利条件并维持繁殖，而相对较低质量的个体更容易受到负面环境的影响，如食物稀缺或土地干扰。这项研究将利用在黑斑岛繁殖的灰海豹(Halichoerus Grypus)种群进行充分研究，以评估个体质量假说。这位研究员将与加拿大萨布尔岛国家公园的政府科学家和社区成员合作，提高公众对黑斑海豹的兴趣，并促进长期研究的价值。端粒是重复的DNA片段，随着细胞分裂而降解，保护染色体免受氧化应激，是身体磨损的指标，可能提供整体质量的衡量标准，从而将细胞衰老与表现出的生殖健康联系起来。这位研究员将重新采样标记海豹的DNA，这些海豹在断奶时收集了早期生命的基因样本。对于新的和已存档的样本，将使用qPCR估计端粒长度，这些长度将提供端粒侵蚀率。端粒动态将与观察到的每只海豹的寿命繁殖努力有关，以评估更长、更慢的侵蚀端粒是否与更高的繁殖成功率和存活率相关。该项目还将调查端粒动力学方面的“质量”是否可遗传，以及母体觅食策略是否为将质量传递给后代提供了一条途径。这位研究员将在端粒分析以及贝叶斯标记-重新捕获和状态空间人口建模方面获得经验。在这项工作期间的每个实地考察季节，该研究员将有针对性地从代表性不足的群体中招募本科生担任研究助理，利用该项目扩大实地考察的机会，并扩大对行为生态学的参与。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 action funds an NSF Postdoctoral Research Fellowship in Biology for FY 2023, 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. The ability of an organism to reproduce in specific environments (fitness), is not evenly distributed within populations. There are differing predictions that investing in current reproduction comes at a cost to survival and future reproduction. One hypothesis called the individual quality framework suggests that some individuals show higher ‘quality’, both reproducing more effectively and surviving longer. These ‘high quality’ individuals may be more able to weather adverse conditions and maintain reproduction while comparatively lower quality individuals are more impacted by negative environments such as food scarcity or land disturbance. This research will take advantage of a well-studied population of grey seals (Halichoerus grypus) that breed on Sable Island to evaluate the individual quality hypotheses. The fellow will collaborate with government scientists and community members in Canada at Sable Island National Park to increase public interest in the Sable Island seals and promote the value of long-term studies.Telomeres, repeating DNA segments which degrade with cell division and protect chromosomes from oxidative stress, are a gauge of somatic wear and may provide a metric for overall quality, thus linking cellular aging to expressed reproductive fitness. The fellow will resample DNA from marked seals that had early-life genetic samples collected at weaning. Telomere length will be estimated for new and archived samples using qPCR, and these lengths will provide telomere erosion rate. Telomere dynamics will be related to lifetime reproductive effort observed for each seal to evaluate whether longer, slower eroding telomeres correlate with higher reproductive success and survival. The project will also investigate whether ‘quality’ in terms of telomere dynamics is heritable, and whether maternal foraging strategy provides a pathway for the transmission of quality to offspring. The fellow will gain experience with telomere assays as well as Bayesian mark-recapture and state-space population modeling. For each field season during this work, the fellow will conduct targeted recruitment of undergraduate students from underrepresented groups to be research assistants, leveraging this project to expand access to fieldwork and broaden participation in behavioral ecology.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.