Projects | Environmental Molecular Sciences Laboratory

As a scientific user facility, the Environmental Molecular Sciences Laboratory (EMSL) provides expertise, instrumentation, and resources to 250 projects each year. Current and past projects supported through a variety of EMSL user proposal avenues are publicly searchable on the EMSL website.

Browse current and past research projects supported by the EMSL User Facility.

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Project pages provide details including:

Research team and institution
The EMSL project DOI
Link to project data available in EMSL’s Data Portal
Project type

Proton paths in biological systems: Composition, stability, and requirements for transmitting protons

Lead Institution

City College of New York

Principal Investigator

Michael Green

Project type

Exploratory Research

Using structures from known proton transmitters, we will calculate, using DFT, the energy for successive proton positions, the bonding with the protons in these positions, and the charges on the…

Identification of root-specific terpenoids, mediators in the plant-microbe interaction in the rhizosphere

Lead Institution

Michigan State University

Principal Investigator

Bjoern Hamberger

Project type

Exploratory Research

The sorghum root microbiome undergoes profound changes during drought, so does its expression of terpene metabolism. Using an artificial root system (rhizotron) with sorghum grown in field soil, it…

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…

SynThetic BiolOgy Driven Approach to Repurpose PolyaMides (STORM)

Lead Institution

Battelle Memorial Institute

Principal Investigator

Kate Kucharzyk

Project type

Exploratory Research

Nylon-6 (PA6) is a polyamide polymer abundant in clothing, ropes, fabrics, and automobile parts. The U.S. annual consumption of PA6 is ~0.5 million metric tons with manufacturing yields of 2.9 kg of…

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…

Developing a protocol for spatial metabolomics to investigate cell types in the Sorghum bicolor stem

Lead Institution

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Principal Investigator

Amy Marshall-Colon

Project type

Exploratory Research

Sorghum bicolor is an important bioenergy crop because it has high nutrient and water use efficiency, and produces a large quantity of biomass that can be processed into ethanol for biofuels. Many…

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,…

Microbial Distributions Related to Carbon Retention, Heavy Metals, and Pore Structure in Serpentine Soils

Lead Institution

Michigan State University

Principal Investigator

Matthew Schrenk

Project type

Exploratory Research

Serpentinizing terranes are a widespread, yet understudied site of key biogeochemical transformations, particularly along continental margins. Ultramafic bedrock, originating at the seafloor and…

Employing synthetic soil environments to test the impact of freeze-thaw and pore geometry on iron, phosphorus, and carbon interactions in permafrost-affected soil

Lead Institution

University of Tennessee

Principal Investigator

Erin Rooney

Project type

Exploratory Research

Arctic warming is accelerating permafrost thaw, exposing previously frozen soil to repeated freeze-thaw disturbance. Freeze-thaw cycles can alter the physical and geochemical environment with…

ModEx Benchmark: AI for Benchmarking Model-Experiment Integration Workflows

Lead Institution

Pacific Northwest National Laboratory

Principal Investigator

Maruti K. Mudunuru

Project type

Exploratory Research

Recently, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), Office of Biological and Environmental Research (BER) launched and concluded the Artificial Intelligence for Earth System Predictability (AI4ESP)…

Composition and adsorption mechanism of metabolites produced by roots of different hemp varieties grown in a synthetic soil habitat

Lead Institution

Utah State University

Principal Investigator

Idowu Atoloye

Project type

Exploratory Research

Understanding the interactions between plant organic molecules and soil minerals is critical in biogeochemical processes. The adsorptive behavior of metabolites on soil mineral surfaces can be…

Rhizosphere Promoted Rock Weathering and Nutrient Cycling in Deep Shale Fractures

Lead Institution

Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

Principal Investigator

Benjamin Gilbert

Project type

Exploratory Research

This project seeks to use EMSL metabolomic and imaging approaches to determine the biogeochemical processes driven by plant roots (sagebrush and lupin) in deep, fractured weathering shale, to test…

Pore-scale evidence of tidal wetland soil carbon stabilization

Lead Institution

U.S. Geological Survey

Principal Investigator

Lisamarie Windham-Myers

Project type

Exploratory Research

The high capacity of vegetated coastal ecosystems to preserve organic carbon is well documented but remains poorly understood at a mechanistic level, challenging emerging efforts to account for…

An improved understanding of coral skeletons as environmental proxies and biomaterials by mapping organics and water at the nanoscale

Lead Institution

Saint Olaf College

Principal Investigator

Anne Gothmann

Project type

Exploratory Research

Scleractinian coral skeletons are highly sensitive to environmental change, can record environmental transformations through their geochemistry, and are of economic importance due to the habitat and…

Revealing the secretome and enriching the function of newly established hyperthermophilic microbial communities with superior cellulolytic and hemicellulolytic activities

Lead Institution

Pacific Northwest National Laboratory

Principal Investigator

Pavlo Bohutskyi

Project type

Exploratory Research

Vast amount of organic waste materials is generated in U.S. These carbon-containing waste streams represent a potentially valuable but underutilized feedstock for production of carbon-neutral…

Modeling microbial community metabolic interactions in hypersaline ecosystems

Lead Institution

Duke University

Principal Investigator

Amy Schmid

Project type

Exploratory Research

The proposed research will test the hypothesis that hypersaline microbial communities interact to maintain stability despite changes in salinity and nutrient availability. Hypersaline-adapted Archaea…

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…

Understanding cell wall remodeling processes of grass root system formation and function for sustainable biofuel production

Lead Institution

Washington State University

Principal Investigator

Karen Sanguinet

Project type

Exploratory Research

Root ideotypes that improve water and nutrient uptake been a major target for improvement of climate resilience in bioenergy grasses. Here we propose to use EMSL’s state of the art capabilities to…

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…

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