Projects

As a scientific user facility, the Environmental Molecular Sciences Laboratory (EMSL) provides expertise, instrumentation, and resources to 250 projects each year.

EMSL projects displayed on the EMSL web site project page reflect project abstracts and information migrated to this page before April 30, 2024. To review current and past EMSL user projects, visit EMSL Science Central.™

Characterization of simplified soil communities with high and low carbon use efficiency across differing moisture treatments

Lead Institution

Pacific Northwest National Laboratory

Principal Investigator

Vanessa Bailey

Project type

FICUS Research

This project is directed under the "Terrestrial Microbial Carbon Cycling" SFA project awarded to Los Alamos National Laboratory. The goal of the SFA is to interrogate how soil microbial…

Integrative analysis of multi-omic data across NEON eco-climatic regions

Lead Institution

University of Massachusetts Amherst

Principal Investigator

Jeffrey Blanchard

Project type

FICUS Research

Our climate crisis, resulting from changes in interacting climate variables (temperature, rainfall, atmospheric chemistry) over the last century, has impacted all ecosystems on the surface of the…

Ecophysiology, inter-domain interactions, and biogeochemical impact of an aerobic methane-producing freshwater bacterium

Lead Institution

Montana State University

Principal Investigator

Roland Hatzenpichler

Project type

FICUS Research

Methane is a potent greenhouse gas and understanding its sources and sinks is a core goal of the BER and DOE missions. Freshwater systems are responsible for approximately 16% of global methane…

Investigating interactions between soil microbial communities and soil organic matter dynamics along climate and vegetation gradients

Lead Institution

Michigan State University

Principal Investigator

Jessica Miesel

Project type

FICUS Research

Soils hold globally-important stocks of organic matter, with critical relevance for nutrient cycling and climate change. As the primary agents of decomposition, soil microbes play a key role in soil…

A day in the life of Chlamydomonas and its neighbors: Systems analysis of a microbial phototroph-heterotroph symbiosis

Lead Institution

University of California, Berkeley

Principal Investigator

Sabeeha Merchant

Project type

FICUS Research

Phytoplankton, which rely on the sun for energy, are responsible for roughly half of global primary productivity. These organisms dramatically change their metabolic strategy in the night when…

Effects of plant functional diversity on the ecosystem responses to forest harvesting

Lead Institution

Institute of Microbiology of the CAS

Principal Investigator

Petr Baldrian

Project type

FICUS Research

Forests are important ecosystem that help to maintain the global C balance largely due to C storage in soils, but also play multiple additional roles including the important economic role as the…

Functional and structural analysis of microbial expansin-related proteins that transform lignocellulosic biomass

Lead Institution

University of Toronto

Principal Investigator

Emma Master

Project type

FICUS Research

This project brings together functional genomics, structural biology, and advanced techniques in material science, to evaluate the untapped potential of microbial expansin-related proteins in the…

Tracking the degradation of fresh particulate organic matter in permeable riverbed sediments using FT-ICR-MS and metagenomic/transcriptomic sequencing

Lead Institution

University of Wisconsin, Madison

Principal Investigator

Eric Roden

Project type

FICUS Research

The hyporheic zone, where groundwater and river water mix within riverine corridors, represents a highly active zone of biogeochemical cycling in which key transformations of many critical elements…

Illuminating soil biogeochemical responses to press and pulse disturbances in a coastal ecosystem

Lead Institution

Pacific Northwest National Laboratory

Principal Investigator

Jianqiu Zheng

Project type

FICUS Research

Coastal ecosystems are undergoing dramatic transitions as sea level rise accelerates and precipitation and storm regimes change. Depending upon the intensity and duration of seawater exposure,…

Belowground genotype-phenotype controls on nitrogen use efficiency of a sorghum bioenergy crop

Lead Institution

University of Arizona

Principal Investigator

Laura Meredith

Project type

FICUS Research

Plant-microbe interactions drive nitrogen (N) transformations in soil, and a detailed understanding of these inter-organismal interactions is needed to enhance crop productivity and N use efficiency,…

Beneficial Partners: Context Dependent Mycorrhizal Resource Exchange in Bioenergy Cropping Systems

Lead Institution

Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory

Principal Investigator

Erin Nuccio

Project type

FICUS Research

The development of environmentally sustainable sources of energy is a grand challenge of the 21st century. Plant feedstocks are promising renewable sources for liquid transportation fuels, and the…

Assessing the contribution of sediment bioirrigation to the oxidative removal of methane from a fluvial wetland.

Lead Institution

Marine Biological Laboratory

Principal Investigator

Emil Ruff

Project type

FICUS Research

Wetlands are among the largest natural sources of the greenhouse gas methane. While the net fluxes of methane to the atmosphere are relatively well understood, the amount of methane-derived carbon…

Microbial Membrane Adaptations in Response to Environmental and Engineered Perturbations: Implications on Attachment, Energetics, and Carbon Cycling in the Deep Terrestrial Subsurface

Lead Institution

University of New Hampshire

Principal Investigator

Paula Mouser

Project type

FICUS Research

The injection of fluids and proppants to fracture deep shale for energy recovery introduces microbial cells and substrates to low-permeability geological formations. Microorganisms in hydraulically…

Metabolic processes and trophic interactions in Antarctic cryptoendolithic communities

Lead Institution

Universita degli Studi della Tuscia

Principal Investigator

Laura Selbmann

Project type

FICUS Research

Cryptoendolithic communities are almost the only life-forms assuring ecosystem functionality in the Antarctic desert, among the harshest terrestrial environments and the Martian counterpart on Earth…

Nuclear cooperation, sharing of public goods and coordination of plant biomass utilization: probing functions unique to multinucleate syncytial fungi

Lead Institution

University of California, Berkeley

Principal Investigator

N. Louise Glass

Project type

FICUS Research

Filamentous fungi are essential for carbon recycling in ecosystems, in symbiotic interactions essential for plant productivity and in biotechnology as superb systems for protein production utilized…

Characterizing the molecular and metabolic regulation of drought-tolerant CAM photosynthesis

Lead Institution

University of Connecticut

Principal Investigator

Karolina Heyduk

Project type

FICUS Research

CAM photosynthesis is a water-saving modification to the more common C3 photosynthetic pathway, found in about 8% of flowering plants, including desert species like agaves and cacti. CAM species can…

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