Projects

Stoichiometry changes to photosynthetic structures in algae in response to environmental stimuli and genetic engineering

Lead Institution

University of California, Berkeley

Principal Investigator

Sabeeha Merchant

Project type

Exploratory Research

Photosynthesis is essential for all life on Earth, with the photosynthetic electron transfer chain and the Calvin-Benson cycle being the key molecular machineries assimilating inorganic carbon with…

Spatial Architecture of Extracellular Electron Shuttle Production for Iron Cycling in a Model Soil Habitat

Lead Institution

University of Texas at Austin

Principal Investigator

Charles Werth

Project type

Exploratory Research

Iron minerals are some of the most reactive and ubiquitous components of soils, sediments, and groundwater. They contribute to the oxidation and reduction of many pollutants and natural organic…

Characterization of Novel Synthetic Biological Materials

Lead Institution

Washington University in St. Louis

Principal Investigator

Marcus Foston

Project type

Exploratory Research

Synthetic biology and genome engineering allows us to harness the machinery of nature to synthesize materials with properties comparable to, or even beyond, the performance of natural materials. We…

Root modulation of soil pore architecture as a potential driver of divergent C accrual between two cover crop types

Lead Institution

United States Department of Agriculture - Agricultural Research Service

Principal Investigator

Lauren Hale

Project type

Exploratory Research

Global carbon (C) storage in soils is critical to mitigating climate change. However, there are substantial uncertainties as to how terrestrial C building practices, such as agricultural cover crops,…

Elucidating the effects of root responses to moderate soil nutrient limitation on mineral bioweathering processes

Lead Institution

University of British Columbia

Principal Investigator

Jean-Thomas Cornelis

Project type

Large-Scale EMSL Research

The excessive use of mineral fertilizer has become a critical contributor to global environmental issues. To control the environmental impacts of agricultural expansion, we need a significant…

Cellular controls on carbon source-sink dynamics in deglaciated soils

Lead Institution

McGill University

Principal Investigator

Lyle Whyte

Project type

Large-Scale EMSL Research

When glaciers in polar regions recede because of ongoing climate change, they expose large new areas of nutrient-poor soil. These “pioneer soils,” which have been trapped under the ice and devoid of…

Investigating the Effect of Negative Arm Protein Conformations on the Circadian Post-Transcriptional Regulation of Cellulases.

Lead Institution

Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute

Principal Investigator

Jennifer Hurley

Project type

FICUS Research

Biofuel production using cellulases extracted from fungi has the potential to be a major resource to replace fossil fuels. Regulating the synthesis of these and other enzymes is crucial for the…

Understanding Product Selectivity of Monoterpene Synthases Using Atomistic Simulations

Lead Institution

Pacific Northwest National Laboratory

Principal Investigator

Hoshin Kim

Project type

Large-Scale EMSL Research

Monoterpene synthases (MTSs) catalyze the biosynthesis of monoterpenes, which play a pivotal role in plant-plant communications as well as key ingredients for many industrial applications including…

Atomistic Simulations of the Discriminatory Power of Desaturase

Lead Institution

Pacific Northwest National Laboratory

Principal Investigator

Marcel Baer

Project type

Large-Scale EMSL Research

We propose to use EMSL supercomputing resources to gain a molecular level understanding of how substrate binding, electron, and proton delivery are controlled by the desaturase metalloenzyme…

Towards Aerosol-Ice Formation Closure – Chemical Imaging Investigation of Aerosol and Ice Nucleating Particles

Lead Institution

State University of New York at Stony Brook

Principal Investigator

Daniel Knopf

Project type

Large-Scale EMSL Research

Prediction of ice nucleating particle (INP) number concentrations from ambient aerosol particles represents an urgent and challenging issue when simulating cloud processes in climate models. A recent…

Deciphering plant-plant, plant-microbe, and plant-soil interactions driving biological invasion in a southwestern desert grassland

Lead Institution

University of Arizona

Principal Investigator

Malak Tfaily

Project type

Large-Scale EMSL Research

Plant invasion is a major component of global change, leading to environmental transformations that alter ecosystem services and associated biogeochemical cycles. The overarching goal of this project…

Deciphering the structure and function of the last unknown major plant organelle - Plasmodesma

Lead Institution

Washington State University

Principal Investigator

Michael Knoblauch

Project type

Large-Scale EMSL Research

Plant tissues exhibit a symplasmic organization; the individual protoplasts are connected to their neighbors via cytoplasmic bridges that extend through pores in the cell walls. These bridges may…

Molecular controls of microbial nitrogen use efficiency in agricultural soils

Lead Institution

United States Department of Agriculture - Agricultural Research Service

Principal Investigator

Amisha Poret-Peterson

Project type

Large-Scale EMSL Research

Microbial nitrogen use efficiency (NUE) reflects the partitioning of organic N taken up between N incorporation into microbial biomass (growth) and N recycled to the environment as inorganic N …

Inferring Kinetic Models for Large-Scale Biochemical Networks

Lead Institution

University of Washington

Principal Investigator

Herbert Sauro

Project type

Large-Scale EMSL Research

Mechanistic models of cell networks that accurately predict changes in input-output dynamics and outcomes upon perturbation have the potential to facilitate a greater understanding of the…

Plant proteome structure-function and pKa prediction augmented with environmental considerations, Deep Learning and integrated datasets

Lead Institution

Johns Hopkins University

Principal Investigator

Carolyn Fitch

Project type

Large-Scale EMSL Research

One of the goals of computational biology is to model cellular behavior. At the crux of this endeavor is the need to understand proteins in their biologically relevant environmental context. In other…

Revealing oxalate-mediated carbon flow through plant-fungal-bacterial rhizosphere interactions as part of a globally important carbon-sequestering biogeochemical process

Lead Institution

Los Alamos National Laboratory

Principal Investigator

Buck Hanson

Project type

Large-Scale EMSL Research

Bacterial and fungal interactions in plant rhizospheres impart a myriad of beneficial functions to plant and soil health as well as playing important roles in biogeochemical cycling. However, the…

Seasonal vertical aerosol profiling for aerosol-cloud-precipitation interactions to advance mountainous hydrological process science

Lead Institution

Los Alamos National Laboratory

Principal Investigator

Allison Aiken

Project type

FICUS Research

Aerosols are central to understanding the water cycle within mountainous regions, but a complete understanding of this role cannot be provided without vertically resolved observations, particularly…

Determination of the Molecular Architecture and Temporal Dynamics that Drive Microbial Lignocellulose Degradation

Lead Institution

Pacific Northwest National Laboratory

Principal Investigator

Song Feng

Project type

Large-Scale EMSL Research

In order to link phenotypic outcomes to molecular determinants, we have developed an integrated functional profiling platform, PhenoProfiling, that pairs activity-based probes (ABPs) with…

The knowns against the unknowns: Photosynthesis gene discovery through multi-omic survey of photosynthetic mutants during light stress

Lead Institution

Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

Principal Investigator

Setsuko Wakao

Project type

Large-Scale EMSL Research

To advance genome-based understanding of photosynthesis, we have generated a high-quality, phenotyped photosynthesis mutant library in the model unicellular green alga, Chlamydomonas reinhardtii…

Numerical Modeling of Hydrologic Exchange and Biogeochemistry in Dynamic Rivers

Lead Institution

Pacific Northwest National Laboratory

Principal Investigator

Timothy Scheibe

Project type

Large-Scale EMSL Research

The River Corridor SFA project (https://www.pnnl.gov/projects/river-corridor) uses a ModEx (integrated models and experiments) approach to study hydrologic exchange fluxes (HEFs) between river…