Projects

Combining high resolution organic matter characterization and microbial meta-omics to assess the effects of nutrient loading on salt marsh carbon sequestration

Lead Institution

Northeastern University

Principal Investigator

Jennifer Bowen

Project type

FICUS Research

Salt marshes sequester an order of magnitude more carbon in their sediments than their terrestrial counterparts because rates of decomposition are inhibited by anoxic, water-logged soils. Once easily…

Scaling molecular mechanisms of mycorrhizal-decomposer interactions to emergent ecosystem carbon balance

Lead Institution

Boston University

Principal Investigator

Jennifer Bhatnagar

Project type

FICUS Research

Emerging evidence from field experiments and global scale analyses suggests that ectomycorrhizal fungi may slow soil carbon (C) cycling via negative interactions with free-living microbial…

The synchronization of microbial and plant phenology in a mountainous watershed and its importance for nutrient retention under changing hydrologic regimes.

Lead Institution

Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

Principal Investigator

Eoin Brodie

Project type

FICUS Research

In mountainous systems that experience seasonal snow-cover, the snowmelt period is characterized by a large pulse of nutrients that originates from microbial mineralization of organic matter beneath…

Linking Proteogenomics, Metabolomics, and Soil Organic Chemistry of Tropical Wetlands to a Soil Nutrient Cycling Model

Lead Institution

Oak Ridge National Laboratory

Principal Investigator

Melanie Mayes

Project type

FICUS Research

Our goal is to explicitly link microbial function for decomposition of soil organic matter to substrate organic chemistry to improve process representation in a soil organic carbon and phosphorus (P)…

Engineering enzyme networks for biomass deconstruction in synthetic microbial communities

Lead Institution

University of British Columbia

Principal Investigator

Steven Hallam

Project type

FICUS Research

Lignocellulose, the main component of plant cell walls, is arguably the most abundant biopolymer on the planet1,2. Through biorefining, it is also a renewable input for energy and materials…

Alternative Technologies for In Situ Bioremediation of Radioactive Iodine: Microbial Reductive Methylation of Iodate to Iodocarbon Gas

Lead Institution

Georgia Institute of Technology

Principal Investigator

Thomas DiChristina

Project type

FICUS Research

The reductive methylation of water soluble iodate (IO3-) to volatile iodine (iodocarbon) gas forms the basis of alternative remediation technologies in iodine-contaminated subsurface environments…

Deciphering interactions hypothesized to lead to high productivity in high pH-high alkalinity phototrophically driven microbial communities

Lead Institution

Montana State University

Principal Investigator

Robin Gerlach

Project type

FICUS Research

Developing algal-based biofuels and bioproducts is one of the goals of the Department of Energy-Bioenergy Technology Office (DOE-BETO). The work proposed here focuses on an algal strain, tentatively…

Understanding genomic underpinnings of high-biomass productivity phenotypes in industrially relevant microalgae

Lead Institution

Environmental Molecular Sciences Laboratory

Principal Investigator

Alex Beliaev

Project type

FICUS Research

Directed evolution and targeted trait selection remain among the most powerful and successful tools available for attaining the process improvements necessary to enable commercial success in many…

Sunlight exposure replaces the function of microbial enzymes needed to degrade DOM

Lead Institution

Oregon State University

Principal Investigator

Byron Crump

Project type

FICUS Research

About half of the dissolved organic matter (DOM) released from land is converted to CO2 in inland waters (e.g., streams, rivers, lakes), driving a CO2 flux to the atmosphere roughly equal to the net…

Carbon cost of plant-microbe interactions under drought

Lead Institution

Los Alamos National Laboratory

Principal Investigator

John Dunbar

Project type

FICUS Research

Plant survival during environmental stress is a major driver of ecosystem carbon (C) cycling, and plant-microbe interactions are central to plant stress survival. However, quantifying how much C…

Bacterial:Fungal Interactions in Soil: Developing a mechanistic understanding of nutrient exchange between soil microbes and the resulting consequences for C/N cycling

Lead Institution

Los Alamos National Laboratory

Principal Investigator

Patrick Chain

Project type

FICUS Research

Little is known about the interactions between bacteria and fungi and how they function in the cycling of carbon (C) and nitrogen (N) in soils. Here we seek to characterize at the molecular level the…

Discover ectomycorrhizal fungi-triggered macro- and micronutrient reactions and movements: From cell to ecosystem function

Lead Institution

University of Florida

Principal Investigator

Hui-ling Liao

Project type

FICUS Research

As the critical members of forest microbiome, ectomycorrhizal fungi (EMF) play important roles in forest ecosystems. EMF provide their tree hosts with macro- and micronutrients in exchange for…

Beyond the rhizosphere: Microbial functional traits through the whole soil profile and their response to warming.

Lead Institution

Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

Principal Investigator

Eoin Brodie

Project type

FICUS Research

The pathways of carbon transport and loss through and from soils--soil organic matter (SOM) depolymerization to dissolved organic carbon and mineralization to carbon dioxide (CO2)--are fundamentally…

Expanding the functional metagenomics toolkit with CRAGE and CRISPR-Cas9 in taxonomically diverse microbial host chassis

Lead Institution

University of British Columbia

Principal Investigator

Steven Hallam

Project type

FICUS Research

Plant and microbial biomass offers a renewable alternative to energy and materials produced from oil. The industrial scale production or biorefining of sugars and aromatic compounds from biomass…

Gene function discovery in photosynthesis: A multi-omics approach

Lead Institution

University of California, Berkeley

Principal Investigator

Sabeeha Merchant

Project type

FICUS Research

Photosynthesis is the defining characteristic of plants enabling the capture and transformation of sunlight into bioenergy and has been the focus of plant research for centuries. Remarkably, whole…

Rhizosphere effects on soil organic matter decomposition and microbial activity in a tropical rainforest under drought: unearthing aggregate- to ecosystem-scale contributions to carbon cycling through whole-ecosystem stable isotope labeling

Lead Institution

University of Arizona

Principal Investigator

Malak Tfaily

Project type

FICUS Research

Interactions at the plant-soil-microbe nexus are difficult to track given the complex networks of species and metabolites involved, in addition to the general challenges to studying heterogeneous and…

Prediction of response in soil microbiome carbon utilization to changing moisture conditions

Lead Institution

Pacific Northwest National Laboratory

Principal Investigator

Jason McDermott

Project type

FICUS Research

The goal of this project is to attain a systems level understanding of the soil microbiome and its phenotypic response to changing moisture through a tractable, spatially explicit examination of the…

Investigation of the Aerosol Impact on the Surface-Atmosphere Interactions

Lead Institution

Purdue University

Principal Investigator

Alexander Laskin

Project type

FICUS Research

This project will provide a physicochemical description of individual atmospheric particles collected in the SAIL experiment, where we will conduct systematic studies of composition and physical…

Characterization of Self-Incompatibility in the Bioenergy Grass Miscanthus

Lead Institution

HudsonAlpha Institute for Biotechnology

Principal Investigator

Kankshita Swaminathan

Project type

FICUS Research

Miscanthus is a widely adapted high biomass perennial grass, commonly grown as an ornamental, that shows promise as a bioenergy crop. Most available Miscanthus lines, including the high yielding…

Plant-mycorrhizal-decomposer interactions under climate change: the role of shifting plant carbon allocation

Lead Institution

Boston University

Principal Investigator

Jennifer Bhatnagar

Project type

FICUS Research

Ectomycorrhizal fungi (EMF) that associate with the roots of live plants can control the growth rate of their hosts and the amount of nutrients and carbon (C) that are recycled through soil (e.g., as…