Metabolomics for a Low Carbon Society

Post Date

February 9th 2011

Application Due Date

May 13th 2011

Full Proposal Deadline(s): May 13, 2011

Funding Opportunity Number

11-527

CFDA Number(s)

47.074

Funding Instrument Type(s)

Grant

Funding Activity Categories

Science and Technology and other Research and Development

Number of Awards

4

Eligibility Categories

Other

*Organization Limit: Proposals may only be submitted by the following: - U.S. academic institutions, U.S. non-profit research organizations including museums, research laboratories, professional societies and similar organizations in the U.S. that are directly associated with educational or research activities, and consortia of only the eligible organizations listed here, that have a U.S. campus. When a consortium of eligible organizations submits a proposal, it must be submitted as a single proposal with one organization serving as the lead and all other organizations as subawardees. Separately submitted collaborative proposals will not be accepted and will be returned without review. Organizations ineligible to respond to this program solicitation may not receive subawards. *PI Limit:

This solicitation is open only to researchers: (1) located at eligible U.S. institutions; and (2) whose Japanese partners have submitted an identical proposal to the Japan Science and Technology Agency by the announced deadline for the program.

Funding

• Estimated Total Funding:

  $2000000

• Award Range:

  $2000000 - $None

Grant Description

This is a U.S.-Japan joint program coordinated by the National Science Foundation and the Japan Science and Technology Agency (JST). Proposals submitted in response to this solicitation must represent joint projects involving both US and Japanese research groups. JST and NSF will jointly manage the proposal review and award process. The "metabolome" is the complete set of metabolites expressed within an organism. Its composition is a reflection of the networks of enzymatic pathways encoded within the genome as well as the interplay of developmental processes and a changing environment over the lifetime of the organism. Metabolomics has exciting applications in bioenergy, environmental interactions, functional genomics and gene discovery, secondary metabolism, genome-wide association mapping, systems biology and metabolic modeling in plant, algal, and microbial systems. However, the scientific promise of metabolomics currently faces multiple challenges that need to be addressed. These challenges include: how to define the metabolome, metabolite annotation, standardization of spatially and temporally resolved sampling, measurement of metabolite flux, dynamic range and depth-of-coverage, instrumentation and infrastructure, informatics and databases. The goal of this joint NSF-JST program is to advance novel biological knowledge in metabolomics in the areas of energy and the environment, and to foster greater collaborative interactions between Japanese and U.S. scientists in these priority areas. The focus of METABOLOMICS will be on plants, microbes, and algae and eligible research areas will include but will not be limited to: Capture of all major metabolitesDevelopment of standards and annotation of unknown metabolitesIdentification of specialized metabolites of potential value In recent years, metabolomics has matured to the point where it is now possible to consider cataloging the complete profiles of small molecules in cells. Such profiling is critically important because these small molecule metabolites are the end products of gene expression and represent the high-resolution biochemical phenotype of the cell, tissue, and organism. Key goals of metabolomics include 1) chemical annotation, i.e. determining the chemical structure of each molecule, 2) biological annotation, i.e. connecting each metabolite to a specific enzyme, biochemical pathway, or biological process, and 3) metabolomic annotation, i.e. the distribution of each metabolite in different cells of an organism which includes spatial and temporal information as well as concentration.

Contact Information

• Agency

  National Science Foundation

• Office:

  None

• Agency Contact:

  NSF grants.gov support
  grantsgovsupport@nsf.gov
  

• Agency Mailing Address:

  If you have any problems linking to this funding announcement, please contact

• Agency Email Address:

  grantsgovsupport@nsf.gov

• More Information:

  NSF Publication 11-527