Building Synthetic Microbial Communities for Biology, Mitigating Climate Change, Sustainability and Biotechnology
This grant supports research using synthetic microbial communities to understand natural systems and create new capabilities for climate, sustainability, and biotech.
This grant is no longer accepting proposals
U.S. National Science Foundation has archived this opportunity.
Funder: National Science Foundation (NSF)
Due Dates: February 3, 2025 (Full Proposal Deadline)
Funding Amounts: $8,000,000 to $10,000,000 total anticipated funding; 7 to 12 awards expected; award size and duration commensurate with project scope
Summary: Supports research using synthetic microbial communities to understand natural microbial systems and develop novel capabilities addressing climate resiliency, sustainability, biotechnology, and biomanufacturing.
Key Information: Proposals must justify use of synthetic communities over natural ones, address reproducibility and scalability, and consider social, ethical, and bio-safety/security implications.
Description
This National Science Foundation (NSF) solicitation invites proposals for research on synthetic microbial communities to advance fundamental biological understanding and address societal challenges related to climate change, sustainability, and biotechnology. Synthetic microbial communities are defined as consortia of taxonomically distinct microbial species (including bacteria, archaea, fungi, and micro-algae) that can be co-cultured under well-defined, reproducible conditions and potentially scaled for production.
The program seeks projects that:
- Use synthetic communities as models to elucidate biological principles governing natural microbial community formation, dynamics, stability, and host interactions.
- Design synthetic communities with novel capabilities and investigate the biological basis of these new functions.
- Define the roles of individual species within communities and their contributions to overall community properties.
- Characterize ecological and evolutionary drivers shaping natural microbial community patterns.
Projects may address biological principles at scales ranging from molecular to ecosystem levels. The solicitation emphasizes building a comprehensive biological knowledge base to enable rational design of synthetic microbial communities for applications in climate resiliency, sustainability, biotechnology, and biomanufacturing.
Proposals must include:
- A clear description and justification for using a synthetic microbial community rather than a natural one.
- Evidence that the synthetic community meets the solicitation’s definition.
- Reproducible methodologies for co-culturing and, if applicable, scalable production.
- Consideration of social, ethical, bio-safety, and bio-security issues.
Projects outside the scope include those focusing solely on single microbial species, those that engineer novel communities without investigating underlying biological processes, studies better suited for other NSF core programs, or research involving potential enhanced pandemic pathogens.
The solicitation also highlights the importance of compliance with best practices in reproducibility, replicability, and responsible use of artificial intelligence and biotechnology, referencing US government policies and the US AI Safety Institute guidelines.
