Projects

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…

Computational Simulations of Antimicrobial Polymeric Surfaces and Biological Membranes

Lead Institution

Universidade Federal de Pernambuco

Principal Investigator

Thereza Soares Da Silva

Project type

Exploratory Research

Medical devices can give rise to treatment-resistant infections upon colonization by pathogenous bacteria. A detailed understanding of the interactions between biological cells and the device surface…

Seattle Structural Genomics Center for Infectious Diseases - Year VI

Lead Institution

Pacific Northwest National Laboratory

Principal Investigator

Garry Buchko

Project type

Exploratory Research

The Seattle Structural Genomics Center for Infectious Disease (SSGCID) is funded by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) to apply genome-scale approaches in solving…

Understanding DNA surface interactions for systems design and engineering

Lead Institution

University of Texas Medical Branch

Principal Investigator

Bernard Pettitt

Project type

Exploratory Research

DNA replication, DNA modification, and single organism engineering are being used in many fields of relevance to the DOE mission. Extensive knowledge of the fundamental reactions involved in these…

Integrating genome-scale metabolic modeling of a microbial community into simulations of subsurface flow and biogeochemical reactive transport.

Lead Institution

Pacific Northwest National Laboratory

Principal Investigator

Steven Yabusaki

Project type

Exploratory Research

The goal of this project is to develop a mechanistic, quantitative, and predictive simulation capability for coupled flow and biogeochemical reactive transport that accounts for • genome-specific…

In-situ TEM study of electrochemically-driven phase transformations in battery storage compounds

Lead Institution

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Principal Investigator

Yet-Ming Chiang

Project type

Large-Scale EMSL Research

Many battery electrode materials, such as lithium transition metal olivines ( LiMPO4, M=Fe, Mn, etc) and oxide spinels (LiMn2O4, LiNi0.5Mn1.5O4, Li4Ti5O12, etc), exhibit phase transformation…

Investigations of Metal-organic Frameworks Using High-field Solid State NMR

Lead Institution

University of California, Berkeley

Principal Investigator

Jeffrey Reimer

Project type

Exploratory Research

Metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) have emerged as materials for the capture of CO2 from post-combustion flue gases. The knowledge of gas binding mechanisms and the in-depth understanding of MOF…

First-principle Studies for Correlated Materials

Lead Institution

Los Alamos National Laboratory

Principal Investigator

Enrique Batista

Project type

Large-Scale EMSL Research

This proposal is to request computational resources in the Chinook cluster for the coming three fiscal years. Our intention is to continue studies on actinide materials that we started with an open…

Decomposition Pathways of Glycerol on Titania-supported Pt and Cu Nanocatalysts

Lead Institution

Baylor University

Principal Investigator

Zhenrong Zhang

Project type

Large-Scale EMSL Research

Understanding the reaction mechanism is a key issue in the development of catalysts that can effectively convert glycerol, a top listed biomass-derived feedstock, to value-added chemicals. The…

Detection of low levels of organic compounds associated with microbially influenced minerals

Lead Institution

University of Montana

Principal Investigator

Nancy Hinman

Project type

Large-Scale EMSL Research

One of the challenges facing subsurface science is detection of paired information about microbial communities and associated minerals. One way to map microbial communities is through detection of…

Influence of Phase-Changing Medium on Surface-Enhanced Electromagnetic Fields and Coherence Lifetime of Active Plasmonic Nanostructures

Lead Institution

Vanderbilt University

Principal Investigator

Richard Haglund

Project type

Large-Scale EMSL Research

The miniaturization of photonic circuits is critical to 21st century data processing and telecommunication technologies. Plasmonics, based on the optical properties of metallic nanostructures, holds…