NOVEL IN SITU IMAGING AND MEASUREMENT TECHNOLOGIES FOR BIOLOGICAL SYSTEMS SCIENCE

The Office of Biological and Environmental Research (BER) of the Office of Science (SC), U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) hereby announces its interest in receiving research applications for novel imaging and measurement technologies for biological systems science. This Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) will consider applications for the development of novel imaging instrumentation and measurement technologies that support the integrative analysis of communication among subcellular compartments, between individual microbial cells and within multicellular communities/plant tissues. The goal is to develop in situ, dynamic and nondestructive approaches to enable multifunctional imaging, quantitative flux measurements, and multiscale integrative analysis of bioenergy-relevant plant and microbial systems. Ideally, these imaging approaches will pave the way for predictive understanding of the spatial and temporal relationships, physical connections, and chemical exchanges that facilitate the flow of materials and information across membranes and between intracellular sp aces. The anticipated outcome of this FOA is the development of in situ imaging and measurement technologies that can (1) resolve multiple key metabolic processes over time within or among cells and (2) bridge the critical gap in linking molecular-scale information to whole-cell, systems-level understanding.