This award is funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Public Law 111-5).
Only a rare fraction of mutations is beneficial in a given environment, and it is uncertain how mutations that are beneficial in one environment will influence organismal performance in other environments. The effect of a mutation could appear in a single environment or could have widespread consequences in many environments. The breadth of benefits of mutations is generally unknown, though is fundamental to understanding adaptation to changing environments. This project will improve understanding of the relationship between adaptation to one environment and ability to use other environments through study of bacteria evolving in laboratory microcosms. This project will collect many beneficial mutants from bacterial populations and precisely quantify their adaptive value in a single selective environment. The scope of indirect effects of these mutants then will be measured by evaluating their effects on organismal performance in a range of different environmental conditions. Contemporary techniques of molecular genetics and microbiology will be used to characterize the biological networks that link genetics, physiology, and ecology in the evolving populations of bacteria.
Linkages between genetics, organismal function, and ecology are underexplored, and most high school and college curricula teach them as discrete subjects. However, research-based laboratory exercises that allow students to study evolution in action and explore the widespread effects of single mutations can promote interdisciplinary learning in which these fields are integrated. This project will enable hundreds of such studies to be conducted simultaneously, distributed among many laboratories and classrooms, each depositing their findings to a central database. Mutants of key types will be selected and their genetic bases identified using contemporary genomic technology, which promises to inspire further research in the laboratory and classroom alike.
