Projects

Something old, something new: systems-level insights into plant-microbial-permafrost carbon dynamics by parallel high-resolution organic matter and microbial meta-omics

Lead Institution

The Ohio State University

Principal Investigator

Virginia Rich

Project type

FICUS Research

A fundamental challenge of modern environmental science is to understand how earth systems will respond to climate change. A parallel challenge in biology is to understand how information encoded in…

Analysis of Post-translational Modifications of endo-Glucanases using High Accuracy Mass Spectrometry

Lead Institution

Michigan State University

Principal Investigator

Jonathan Walton

Project type

Large-Scale EMSL Research

A critical step in the lignocellulosic biofuels pipeline is the extraction of fermentable sugars from plant biomass. Extracellular fungal enzymes are currently the most effective way of…

Does Chloroplast Thylakoid Membrane Organization Influence Desiccation Tolerance in Green Algae?

Lead Institution

Marine Biological Laboratory

Principal Investigator

Zoe Cardon

Project type

Large-Scale EMSL Research

A key step in the evolution and diversification of advanced life on Earth was the transition from aquatic to terrestrial habitats. Organisms making the leap from water to land faced high light levels…

AMANZI - A New Community-Based High-Performance Code for Reactive Transport Modeling: Deployment for BER Science Applications

Lead Institution

Los Alamos National Laboratory

Principal Investigator

John Moulton

Project type

Large-Scale EMSL Research

Advancing predictive models of complex environmental systems, such as the Earth's subsurface and terrestrial ecosystems, requires that high-performance computational software and hardware be…

Nitrogen fixation in Populus: Identification and localization of the key diazotrophs in planta

Lead Institution

University of Washington

Principal Investigator

Sharon Doty

Project type

FICUS Research

Poplar (Populus) trees are an early successional pioneer plant species able to colonize nutrient-limited, cobble-dominated riparian zones. Native poplar has a diverse microbiota including strains…

Fluorescence-based cell sorting and targeted proteomic analysis of active methane-oxidizing syntrophic consortia from environmental samples

Lead Institution

California Institute of Technology

Principal Investigator

Victoria Orphan

Project type

FICUS Research

Determining the links between phylogenetically identified microorganisms with their metabolic activity and function in complex natural ecosystems has been a long-standing challenge in microbial…

Building the phage-host-environment interaction data to scale from genes-to-ecosystems: Towards predictive modeling of wild microbial and viral community dynamics

Lead Institution

University of Michigan

Principal Investigator

Melissa Duhaime

Project type

FICUS Research

Ocean microbes and viruses are now at the forefront of Earth System studies. The enormous numbers of ocean viruses (typically >10^5 ml-1, usually ten for every microbial cell) are driving…

Specialized Ribosomes: A New Frontier in Gene Regulation

Lead Institution

Texas A&M University

Principal Investigator

Deborah Bell-Pedersen

Project type

FICUS Research

A longstanding view in molecular biology is that all the ribosomes in a cell function identically. Our recent preliminary data, and those of others, challenge this dogma, and instead support the…

A Rhizosphere-Scale Investigation of the Relationship Between Plant Productivity and Methane Emissions from Wetlands

Lead Institution

University of Washington

Principal Investigator

Rebecca Neumann

Project type

FICUS Research

The proposed project will advance understanding of the response of methane production and methane oxidation to changes in plant productivity so that modeled representations of these processes and…

Integrated Omics Analyses of a Populus Pedigree for Crop Improvement

Lead Institution

Oak Ridge National Laboratory

Principal Investigator

Chongle Pan

Project type

FICUS Research

Populus is a DOE flagship plant for biofuel biomass production. Improving Populus as a feedstock crop is a major focus of DOE Bioenergy Research Centers (BRCs) and many academic laboratories. Here,…

Genomes to dynamic decay communities: Understanding fungal interactions during early decomposition events in natural lignocellulosic substrate

Lead Institution

Swansea University

Principal Investigator

Dan Eastwood

Project type

FICUS Research

Understanding the microbial decomposition of lignocellulose and its contribution to global carbon cycling requires realistic model systems that go beyond in silico and single culture analyses. Fungal…

3D Reality Check: Developing Structural Support for Predicting Microbial Function and Interpreting Microbial "Omics" Data

Lead Institution

Marine Biological Laboratory

Principal Investigator

Zoe Cardon

Project type

FICUS Research

Microbial activities on which humanity and ecosystems depend, and which influence climate and support biofuel production, are determined both by microbial community membership and by the resources…

Identifying the source of ice nucleating particles in biomass burning aerosol, and the effect of chemical aging and freeze-drying on their freezing properties

Lead Institution

Carnegie Mellon University

Principal Investigator

Ryan Sullivan

Project type

Large-Scale EMSL Research

The nanoscale surface features that create efficient ice active sites on atmospheric particles that control heterogeneous ice nucleation remain largely unknown. Cloud glaciation induced by these ice…

Heterogeneous catalysts design for biorefining and energy conversion processes

Lead Institution

University of South Carolina

Principal Investigator

Andreas Heyden

Project type

Large-Scale EMSL Research

The overall goal of this project is to develop, implement, and apply a set of computational, multiscale techniques for heterogeneous catalysts design with special emphasis on the EMSL theme, &quot…

Organic N Turnover in Soil: An Overlooked Component of C Cycling

Lead Institution

Oregon State University

Principal Investigator

David Myrold

Project type

Large-Scale EMSL Research

It is now generally accepted that most of the organic matter in soils consists of materials that have been processed by the microbial community. Indeed, "necromass"--the remains of dead…

State-of-the-Art Computational Investigations of Environmentally Relevant Uranyl Peroxide Compounds and Nanoparticles

Lead Institution

University of Manchester

Principal Investigator

Nikolas Kaltsoyannis

Project type

Large-Scale EMSL Research

The linear dioxo U(VI) moiety [UO2]2+ (uranyl) is ubiquitous in the chemistry of uranium; indeed, approximately half the known compounds of uranium contain this moiety. A fascinating subset of these…

Towards a metabolic model of circadian clock control of metabolism in Neurospora crassa.

Lead Institution

Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute

Principal Investigator

Jennifer Hurley

Project type

Large-Scale EMSL Research

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

The proteome of a day in the life of Chlamydomonas

Lead Institution

University of California, Berkeley

Principal Investigator

Sabeeha Merchant

Project type

Large-Scale EMSL Research

Nearly all organisms exhibit diurnal metabolic cycles. In photosynthetic organisms, light is a key input into metabolic cycles. Transcriptomics experiments in cyanobacteria, algae and plants have…

Histone dynamics during the life cycle of Chlamydomonas

Lead Institution

Donald Danforth Plant Science Center

Principal Investigator

James Umen

Project type

Large-Scale EMSL Research

Diurnal cycles are central drivers of gene expression in photosynthetic organisms including cyanobacteria, algae and land plants. The model unicellular green alga Chlamydomonas reinhardtii has…

Advanced Molecular Characterization of Solvo-Catalytic Lignin Disassembly

Lead Institution

Washington University in St. Louis

Principal Investigator

Marcus Foston

Project type

Large-Scale EMSL Research

Lignin obtained from lignocellulosic biomass is an abundant, renewable, low-cost resource whose carbon-rich, aromatic composition makes it ideal to displace some petroleum-based feedstocks as…