NSF Postdoctoral Fellowship in Biology FY 2021: General plasticity kinetics: developing a universal framework of developmental plasticity

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. All multicellular organisms develop according to a body plan defined by their genes.

However, developmental trajectories must also be flexible enough to respond to different environmental conditions. Plastic traits can persist through a process known as genetic accommodation, which has been increasingly discussed as a major facilitator of novelty and divergence. This project aims to demonstrate developmental plasticity's value and prominence in evolutionary theory and to elucidate how phenotypes arise from the interplay between genotypes and the environment.

To promote broad dissemination, the Fellow will create an interactive web interface to visualize the parameters of any plastic trait and teaching modules for undergraduate courses in Mathematics Modeling and Developmental Biology. To promote retention and inclusion of historically excluded students in biology graduate programs, the Fellow will develop workshop materials and establish a mentorship program for the Diversity Fellows Program at the University of Utah.

The project will introduce a general framework for studying plasticity, drawing from principles of theoretical ecological and mathematical modeling (Aim I) and then apply that universal model to a laboratory case study of mouth-form plasticity in the Pristionchus genus of Diplogastrid nematodes (Aim II). This research will span several scales in the hierarchy of life and use diverse methodologies to reveal three predicted outcomes: changes in plasticity, corresponding changes in trait evolution, and the underlying molecular mechanisms of both.

This work identifying the process of genetic accommodation in real time will tie developmental plasticity in response to environmental perturbations to rigorous theoretical and empirical laboratory approaches in an emerging model study system. This research has the potential to revise mainstream evolutionary biology to include a mature theory of how the environment and genes determine phenotypes during development.

The Fellow will experience training on mathematical modeling, functional genomics, and mentorship practices; these skills are required to tackle many of the most important modern problems in ecology and evolutionary biology. Outreach activities include organizing a local peer-to-peer learning community to promote the practice of OpenScience and reproducibility in R.

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.