Projects

Exploring soil organic matter dynamics in a warming world using an array of warming experiments and soil models

Lead Institution

Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory

Principal Investigator

Aimee Classen

Project type

Exploratory Research

Soil carbon (C) feedbacks to the atmosphere remain one of the greatest areas of uncertainty in future climate predictions, largely due to an inadequate representation of three key factors in…

Feedbacks between microbial community dynamics and the persistence of soil organic carbon

Lead Institution

Pacific Northwest National Laboratory

Principal Investigator

Kirsten Hofmockel

Project type

Exploratory Research

Soil organic matter (SOM) is the largest active carbon reservoir in the terrestrial environment and significantly influences soil fertility, water quality, global C cycling and associated feedbacks…

Vertical profile of atmospheric particle composition via tethered balloon system

Lead Institution

Pacific Northwest National Laboratory

Principal Investigator

Fan Mei

Project type

Exploratory Research

The vertical distribution of aerosol strongly influences the radiative forcing of the aerosols. However, observational data is limited. Both satellite observation and ground-based measurements are…

The effects of coculture on cellular spatial heterogeneity in colony and plant-associated biofilms

Lead Institution

University of Massachusetts Medical School

Principal Investigator

Elizabeth Shank

Project type

Exploratory Research

Bacteria live everywhere, from the soil and sea to the surface of every plant and animal on earth. Most bacteria exist within diverse, multispecies communities that exert profound impacts on their…

Character of organic matter in soils of temperate forest ecosystems: Do chlorophyll catabolites (phyllobilins) travel deep?

Lead Institution

Cornell University

Principal Investigator

Carmen Martinez

Project type

Exploratory Research

Soil organic matter (SOM) is the largest reservoir of carbon (C) and nutrients, especially nitrogen (N), in terrestrial ecosystems. SOM is found throughout soil profiles, with content typically…

Unravelling The Mechanisms Of Biomineralization In A Biogeochemically Significant Microbe Through Multimodal Nano-Imaging At The Organic-Inorganic Interface

Lead Institution

University of Washington

Principal Investigator

Alexander Gagnon

Project type

Exploratory Research

The pace of skeletal growth in shells and bones during biomineralization is impacted by interactions between biologically produced organic compounds and the growing mineral. The organic component…

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…

Composition characterization of ZnO:Cr & ZnO:Co

Lead Institution

University of Washington

Principal Investigator

Bradley Roberts

Project type

Exploratory Research

Thin film samples of ZnO:Cr and ZnO:Co have been grown via the co-sputtering method. Our initial magnetic measurements indicate that ZnO:Cr is ferromagnetic up to and above room temperature which is…

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…

Model Development on Using Clay Membranes for Arsenic Removal from Drinking Water

Lead Institution

University of Missouri - Columbia

Principal Investigator

Baolin Deng

Project type

Exploratory Research

The ability of fine-grained clay minerals to act as semi-permeable membranes and restrict the passage of dissolved solutes is well documented. This unique property of clay, often referred to more…

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…

Model Development on Using Clay Membranes for Arsenic Removal from Drinking Water

Lead Institution

University of Missouri - Columbia

Principal Investigator

Baolin Deng

Project type

Exploratory Research

Use of clay membranes for arsenic removal from drinking water has been explored at the University of Missouri-Columbia, supported by a CAREER grant from the National Science Foundation. Arsenic is a…

MBE growth of epitaxial anatase TiO2 (001) on STO(001) on Si(001) and characterization of TiO2 films

Lead Institution

University of Washington

Principal Investigator

Kelli Griffin

Project type

Exploratory Research

The proposed visit to the EMSL facilities at PNNL is for the observation of the oxygen plasma assisted molecular beam epitaxy (OPA-MBE) deposition process of epitaxially grown anatase TiO2 on SrTiO3…

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…