DOE SC BSSD Grant: Innovative Bioimaging for Bioenergy Research

Synergistic collaborations with researchers in other Federal Agencies and their FFRDC’s, including the DOE/NNSA National Laboratories are permitted; but DOE/NNSA National Laboratories, other Federal agencies, and their FFRDC’s are not permitted to apply as the lead institution.

DOE/NNSA National Laboratories, other Federal agencies, and their FFRDC’s may submit applications in response to this FOA as collaborators to a lead institution’s application. Such proposed collaborations should be limited to filling critical voids in expertise and can represent no more than 25 percent of the total budget. Collaborators from DOE/NNSA National Laboratories, other Federal Agencies, or their FFRDC’s may not exceed 25 percent of the total budget for the collaborative group.

The DOE SC Biological Systems Science Division (BSSD) in Biological and Environmental Research (BER) hereby announces its interest in receiving applications to support fundamental research towards enabling new bioimaging approaches to achieve an advanced understanding of plant and microbial systems relevant to bioenergy research.

New quantum dot (QD)-based-imaging approaches including quantum probes and sensors, and complementary optical imaging instrumentation, are needed to allow the observation and characterization of multiple complex biological processes occurring within living plant and microbial systems, including rhizosphere and soil microbiomes. Processes of interest include, but are not limited to measuring enzyme function within cells, tracking metabolic pathways in vivo, monitoring the transport of materials within cells or across cellular membranes, monitoring signaling processes between cells within plant-microbe and microbe-microbe interactions. Development of probes and sensors with desirable optical properties functionalized with specific biologically active molecules to interact and bind with specific cellular targets of interest are encouraged. Proposed approaches should enable dynamic localization and imaging to facilitate testing and validation of hypothesized cellular processes. It is expected that applications will make use of quantum-dot enabled approaches for imaging of biological targets non-destructively and in real time, to dramatically enhance our ability to measure biological processes in and among living cells.