Projects | Environmental Molecular Sciences Laboratory

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…

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…

Resolving carbon fluxes within microbial communities inhabiting full-scale bioenergy facilities

Lead Institution

University of British Columbia

Principal Investigator

Ryan Ziels

Project type

FICUS Research

Elucidating the physiology and metabolic function of uncultivated microorganisms in their in situ environment remains a critical challenge in microbial ecology. This knowledge gap obfuscates attempts…

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…

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…

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…

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…

Understanding contributions of agricultural dust to vertical profiles of ice-nucleating particles in the central Great Plains

Lead Institution

Pacific Northwest National Laboratory

Principal Investigator

Susannah Burrows

Project type

FICUS Research

Agricultural dusts contribute to airborne particulate amount, aerosol optical depth, and atmospheric ice-nucleating particle (INP) concentrations in agricultural regions. Agricultural dusts include…

Temporal Dynamics of Microbial Traits Driving Divergent Patterns of Carbon Flow During Surface Litter Decomposition

Lead Institution

Los Alamos National Laboratory

Principal Investigator

Marie Kroeger

Project type

FICUS Research

Microbially-driven surface litter decomposition is an important terrestrial ecosystem process creating soil organic carbon that serves as an essential carbon sink. Climate change projections show…

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…