NSF Postdoctoral Fellowship in Biology FY 2021: Using butterfly wing color patterns to elucidate an uncharacterized Wnt pathway

Mazo-Vargas, Anyimilehidi, Washington DC

Investigators

Abstract

This action funds an NSF Postdoctoral Research Fellowship in Biology for FY 2021, Broadening Participation of Groups Under-represented in Biology. The Fellowship supports a research and training plan for the Fellow that will increase the participation of groups underrepresented in biology. Multicellular animals share common signaling pathways that are responsible for patterning and regulating development in early animals (embryos) all the way to adults. One such pathway is called the Wnt signaling pathway, and its study has been instrumental to our understanding of cell-cell communication, animal development, stem cell biology, and cancer. Wnt pathways have been well studied, and a “canonical pathway” is the best understood. However, there are non-canonical functions of the Wnt pathway as well. This research aims to integrate genomic tools and the attributes of butterfly wing patterns to determine how Wnt signals instruct pattern formation in these wings. Furthermore, the fellow will take advantage of butterfly biology's natural appeal to increase the participation of underrepresented groups in life sciences. Specifically, (1) creating a Spanish-language active learning module for bilingual schools, (2) providing summer internships to two high-school students per year with the sponsoring scientist Dr. Arnaud Martin. (3) Encouraging the participation of diverse scientists at the postdoctoral level. Butterfly wing patterns are visually compelling, two-dimensional arrays of differentiated cells where signaling outputs from the tissue are directly translated into color patterns. Preliminary data from the fellow's Ph.D. work and the sponsoring lab proposes that the conserved WntA molecule organizes discrete domains of color-forming scale cells, potentially independently of the canonical Wnt pathway. Hence, the fellow will generate a laboratory colony of the butterfly Junonia coenia deficient for the WntA protein; then, she will survey how WntA presence/absence impacts gene expression and chromatin accessibility during wing development. Those data will provide a genome-wide landscape of the cellular responses to WntA signaling, which the fellow will use to select candidate genes for specific assays: visualizing mRNA and protein in the developing wings (i.e., immunochemistry), and CRISPR/cas9 gene knock-outs. The fellow will formally test the non-canonicity of WntA signaling and tackle the molecular mechanisms that mediate signal integration and result in sharp cell specification domains, as observed in the sharp boundaries that delineate color patterns. This original work will be important for a comprehensive understanding of Wnt signaling and may shed light on novel aspects of the pathway that could extend across the animal kingdom. In this proposal, the fellow will work with outreach programs, training and mentoring of future scientists, and develop a networking group for Latin-American and first-generation graduate students and postdocs interested in EvoDevo. 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.