CAREER: Development and evolution of phenotypic plasticity in aphids

University Of Rochester, Rochester NY

Investigators

Abstract

Many organisms rely on signals from their environment to influence how they develop, a phenomenon called phenotypic plasticity. This project uses the environmentally-cued production of winged or wingless variants in pea aphids to examine the developmental genetic basis of plasticity, as well as to investigate the genetic basis of plasticity variation within and between species. This integrative research uses a variety of approaches, including genetic mapping, genomics, gene knockdown, pharmaceutical manipulations, and careful developmental observations. This research will significantly advance knowledge of the molecular mechanisms that control phenotypic plasticity and the genes responsible for the evolution of that plasticity. The research team will include graduate, undergraduate, and high school students. Community engagement activities will broaden the impact of the research and broaden the training of the students. The team will offer a summer course to high school students, and will present the research outcomes to the general public and to high school audiences. Moreover, a participation-based teaching module developed from the research will be implemented in a core undergraduate genetic course, helping to train the next generation of scientists. This research addresses the fascinating and understudied problem of how developmental processes are influenced by environmental cues to cause phenotypic diversity and, importantly, how those processes evolve. The research comprises three objectives that capitalize on the powerful comparative framework provided by the environmentally-cued wing dimorphisms of aphids, working from within to between species investigations. The first objective is an in-depth molecular investigation of wing morph determination within a single species, the pea aphid. The research team will discover the molecular mechanisms that control wing morph determination in this species, testing the interactions of three candidate pathways using RNAi and pharmaceutical manipulations. Second, variation in the strength of the plasticity response exhibited by different pea aphid genotypes will be examined. The research team will identify the genes responsible for this intraspecific variation using genetic mapping and gene expression analyses. Third, the focus will shift to comparing species that exhibit differences in the developmental timing of their plasticity responses. The research team will use gene expression analysis, RNAi, and pharmaceutical manipulations to ask how wing morph determination mechanisms have changed between species. 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.