NSF Postdoctoral Fellowship in Biology FY 2021: Ecological and genetic structuring of a pathogen microbiome and its effect on virulence

Kolp, Matthew Robert, Manhattan KS

Investigators

Abstract

This action funds an NSF Postdoctoral Research Fellowship in Biology for FY 2021, Integrative Research Investigating the Rules of Life Governing Interactions Between Genomes, Environment and Phenotypes. The fellowship supports research and training of the fellow that will contribute to the area of Rules of Life in innovative ways. Infectious fungal pathogens are capable of hosting their own microbes, and these microbes can affect the relationship between the fungus and the plants and animals. The project goals are to develop general rules to better understand the relationship between these microbes and their pathogenic hosts, and how these relationships evolve. These goals are relevant to threats that pathogens pose to humans, agriculture, and biodiversity. The fellow will engage in a series of activities designed to highlight how basic discovery informs applied research for a broad audience. The fellow will hold a series of seminars for extension agents and agricultural stakeholders, highlighting the impacts of crop pest and pathogen life cycle on crop management strategies. Further, the fellow will implement interactive lessons for elementary students in underserved schools in rural TN, using aphids, fungal pathogens, and other microbes. These lessons will expose students to beneficial impacts of microbes on human life. The fungal pathogen Pandora neoaphidis is an important natural microbial enemy of aphids. The proposed work develops this pathogen as a tractable system for studying microbiome effects on host-pathogen interactions. The pathogen’s microbiome of endosymbiotic bacteria is hypothesized to explain pea aphid epidemics. The project will test whether endosymbiont diversity in P. neoaphidis from infected aphids collected from semi-natural areas recapitulates pathogen genetic diversity or ecological factors. The fellow will use metagenomics to determine the functional capacity of various endosymbiont taxa, with the goal of testing if P. neoaphidis endosymbionts correlate with difference in virulence among strains. This work will broaden understanding of how ecology and evolution shape pathogen associations with microbes. Aphids are invasive agricultural pests, and fungal pathogens are used as a biological control of aphid populations. Developing an understanding of how agricultural pests resist biocontrol agents is critical in integrated pest management. 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.