NSF PRFB FY23: Methylation and microbes as moderators of genotype-by-environment interactions

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。预测生物体将如何应对气候变化具有挑战性，因为它们的反应可能看起来是随机的，或者对每个人来说都是独一无二的。将推动个体反应的过程与种群或物种层面的结果联系起来，可能会改善预测。该项目的主要目标是研究DNA结构的变化和与微生物的关系这两个因素如何影响对环境的反应。该项目调查了这些因素在不同环境中和随时间推移在蝗虫物种中的模式。该项目将测试纳入这些因素如何改善对气候变化影响的预测。这位研究员将与当地一所社区大学的老师和学生合作，找到向广大观众解释气候变化影响的最佳方法。这位研究员还将让社区学院和转学学生参与研究过程。该项目调查了研究生态和进化对环境变化的反应中两个重要新兴机制的罕见组合：CPG甲基化和微生物群落。利用多种方法的组合，这位研究员将检验这一假说，即表观遗传变化和共生关系通过提高低海拔地区的存活率和缓解高海拔地区对能量获得和繁殖力的温度限制，有助于放松适应限制。这位研究员将首先描述跨越海拔的甲基化和微生物群落的自然模式，同时通过现场相互移植实验控制基因。接下来，实验室普通花园实验将建立特定环境因素及其对共生体、甲基化模式和表型结果的影响之间的联系。作为补充，通过给蝗虫喂食无菌、抗生素或益生菌处理的食物来操纵微生物群的实验，将阐明微生物群、甲基化水平和受控环境下表型结果之间的关系。最后，这位研究员将分析博物馆标本中甲基化和微生物群落随着时间的推移的模式，并使用历史和当代的比较来测试这些因素是否可以更好地预测气候变化对这个蝗虫系统的影响。这位研究员将通过她更广泛的影响计划获得教学经验，并通过学习表观遗传学方法来扩大她解决研究问题的方法范围。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. Predicting how organisms will react to climate change is challenging because their responses can seem random or unique to each individual. Linking processes that drive individual responses to outcomes at the level of populations or species could improve predictions. This project’s main goal is to study how two factors, changes to DNA structure and relationships with microbes, affect responses to the environment. The project investigates patterns in these factors across environments and over time in a grasshopper species. The project will test how including these factors improves predictions of the impacts of climate change. The fellow will partner with teachers and students at a local community college to find the best methods of explaining the impacts of climate change to broad audiences. The fellow will also involve community college and transfer students in the research process.The project investigates a rare combination of two significant emerging mechanisms in the study of ecological and evolutionary responses to variation in the environment: CpG methylation and microbiomes. Using a combination of approaches, the fellow will test the hypothesis that epigenetic changes and symbiotic relationships help to relax fitness constraints by improving survival at low elevation and easing temperature constraints on energy gain and fecundity at high elevation. The fellow will first characterize natural patterns in methylation and microbiomes across elevation, while controlling for genotype by using a field reciprocal transplant experiment. Next, laboratory common garden experiments will establish links between specific environmental factors and their effects on symbionts, methylation patterns, and phenotypic outcomes. Complementarily, experiments manipulating the microbiome, by feeding grasshoppers with sterile, antibiotic, or probiotic-treated food, will elucidate relationships between the microbiome, methylation levels, and phenotypic outcomes under controlled environments. Lastly, the fellow will analyze patterns in methylation and microbiomes over time in museum specimens, and use historical-contemporary comparisons to test whether these factors can better predict the impact of climate change on this grasshopper system. The fellow will gain teaching experience through her broader impacts plan, and increase the scope of approaches she uses to tackle her research questions by learning epigenetic methods.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.