This action funds an NSF National Plant Genome Initiative Postdoctoral Research Fellowship in Biology for FY 2020. The fellowship supports a research and training plan in a host laboratory for the Fellow who also presents a plan to broaden participation in biology. The title of the research and training plan for this fellowship to Leslie M. Kollar is "Genomic mechanisms driving adaptive divergence in the yellow monkey flower, Mimulus guttatus". The host institution for the fellowship is the Michigan State University and the sponsoring scientists are Dr. David Lowry and Dr. Chad Niederhuth.
The evolution of gene regulation has long been hypothesized to play a key role in the rich diversity present in nature. In the short term, gene expression can change as a result of varying environmental conditions. In the long term however, the evolution of gene regulation involves changes in the sequence which ultimately result in diversity and local adaptation. The goal of this research is to address foundationally important questions regarding the role of adaptive divergence in the evolution of gene regulation at a mechanistic level. This approach is only possible in systems with genomic resources and where local adaptation has been well characterized, such as the yellow monkey flower, Mimulus guttatus. Elucidating how evolution shapes gene regulation in response to environmental factors will advance an understanding of the mechanisms of local adaptation and plant stress responses. Understanding these processes will be critical for the development of resilient regionally-adapted crops to more extreme climatic conditions. This research will also promote mentorship for undergraduate researchers from historically underrepresented groups. The mentoring component will operate under a continuous improvement model, which will focus primarily on incorporating previously published and newly developed methods in universal design for mentoring STEM students in higher education. These students will take part in molecular laboratory protocols, data analyses, and project development in direct support of the research aims. Training objectives for the post-doctoral fellow include building on transcriptomic, epigenomic, and genomic methods along with bolstering bioinformatic skills.
To understand how gene expression evolves through the process of adaption, the fellow will study multiple types of adaptive gene regulatory divergence between coastal and inland populations of the yellow monkeyflower, Mimulus guttatus. Objective one will evaluate patterns of divergence in the regulatory landscape across developmental stages between the two populations. To establish the locally adaptive differences in development, chromatin and transcriptional changes as well as regulatory sequence variation will be evaluated. Objective two will focus on the identification of the gene regulatory causes of local adaptive differences in tolerance to oceanic salt spray of coastal and inland populations. Damaging salt spray is a well-studied environmental stressor in M. guttatus, and these results will build upon this foundation by identifying underlying regulatory regions and sequence variation. Finally, for objective three, the fellow will examine how stress memory can facilitate differential responses to chronic stressors. This is a phenomenon known as ‘priming’ or ‘acclimation’. The research will focus on whether M guttatus exhibits priming in response to a chronic abiotic stress, oceanic salt spray, and identify under what conditions plants employs this defensive strategy. The fellow will establish the symptoms of priming at the phenotypic level and compare how different lengths of exposure to salt affect gene regulatory responses for the coastal and inland populations. All data, analyses, and biological specimens will be made publicly available to the scientific community through public repositories. Results of the research will be disseminated through journal publications and presentations at national conferences.
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.
