| 项目编号: | 1651087
|
| 项目名称: | CAREER: Teasing Apart the Tempo and Mode of Environmental Adaptation With a Defined Ecological Context and Evolutionary Replication Across Multiple Timescales |
| 作者: | Andrew Alverson
|
| 承担单位: | University of Arkansas
|
| 批准年: | 2017
|
| 开始日期: | 2017-08-01
|
| 结束日期: | 2022-07-31
|
| 资助金额: | 387146
|
| 资助来源: | US-NSF
|
| 项目类别: | Continuing grant
|
| 国家: | US
|
| 语种: | 英语
|
| 特色学科分类: | Biological Sciences - Environmental Biology
|
| 英文关键词: | adaptation
; organism
; ecological diversity
; project
; future environmental change
; adaptation process
; environmental adaptation
; evolutionary transition
; natural independent evolutionary experiment
; evolutionary replication
; evolutionary biology
; environmental gradient
; multiple timescale
; ecological setting
|
| 英文摘要: | This project investigates a fundamental question in evolutionary biology: how do organisms adapt to new or changing environments? Adaptation requires genetic change. Although we usually only think about genetic change as mutations in genes, organisms can also adapt through changes in the ways existing genes are expressed. The main goal of this project is to determine how quickly and in what ways microbes adapt to new environments. The study organisms, diatoms, are a group of microscopic algae that originated in the ocean, but that have successfully colonized and diversified in freshwaters many times, a generally rare event in microbes. These repeated evolutionary transitions, from salt water to freshwater habitats, represent natural independent evolutionary experiments, and a very unique opportunity to explore how organisms adapt to new environments. The researchers will use a combination of molecular genetic studies and laboratory experiments to determine whether these multiple instances of adaptation to freshwater habitats played out the same way each time, involving the same sets of genes and genetic changes, or in many different, potentially independent ways. Results will provide valuable knowledge on the changes that allow organisms to establish and diversify in new habitats, and will help us predict how organisms will respond to future environmental change. The project will also train several undergraduate and graduate students and a postdoctoral researcher. Outreach activities are creative and will involve citizen scientists and engage K-12 public school students.
This project uses freshwater colonization by ancestrally marine diatoms to address multiple important questions: (1) Does environmental adaptation involve changes in gene expression, structural genomic changes, or both? (2) Are structural changes more often associated with the evolution of habitat specialists? (3) What do comparisons between freshwater lineages of disparate age, and in potentially different stages of adaptation, reveal about the adaptation process in general? How long does it take to fully optimize gene expression for a new environment? (4) Is there more than one genetic route across a strong and infrequently crossed environmental gradient? Does the rarity of marine-freshwater transitions by microbes predict a single adaptive solution? The questions will be addressed through genome sequencing and comparative transcriptomics of marine and freshwater diatoms grown in a laboratory common garden experiment. The project is framed around a robust phylogenetic hypothesis, a defined ecological setting, and includes evolutionary replication across multiple timescales, allowing for testing, and serial retesting, of hypotheses about the tempo and mode of adaptation. A primary strength is the study system, which represents a complex historical pattern of marine-freshwater transitions. The planned analysis of 30-35 species will: (1) capture the full range of phylogenetic and ecological diversity across the group, (2) maximize the number of marine-freshwater contrasts, and (3) maximize the accuracy of ancestral-state reconstructions. |
| 资源类型: | 项目
|
| 标识符: | http://119.78.100.158/handle/2HF3EXSE/89438
|
| Appears in Collections: | 全球变化的国际研究计划
科学计划与规划
|
|
There are no files associated with this item.
|
| Recommended Citation: | |
Andrew Alverson. CAREER: Teasing Apart the Tempo and Mode of Environmental Adaptation With a Defined Ecological Context and Evolutionary Replication Across Multiple Timescales. 2017-01-01.
|
|
|