BII: life without water: protecting macromolecules, cells, and organisms during desiccation and rehydration across kingdoms of life

Active Cooperative Agreement Awarded Last action

Award ID
2419923
Recipient
Awarding agency
Obligated
$11,052,709

Award facts

Assistance listing
47.074 Biological Sciences
Completion date 80% complete
Place of performance
East Lansing, MI 48824, USA

Award details come from USAspending.gov.

Description

As the agency reported it.

Abstract
Life on earth evolved in the oceans and consequently all life on our planet is composed mostly of water. When life moved out of the ocean, surviving environments with limited water became a necessity. One approach to survive this new extreme, that is present across all kingdoms of life, is to dry out, or desiccate, while waiting for water to return. Tolerating desiccation requires coordination across cells, tissues, and organisms, but the details of how this happens are unknown. The water and life interface institute (walii) biology integration institute will fill in these gaps using fungi, plants, and animals with low and high desiccation tolerance. The long-term goals of this institute are understanding how organisms tolerate desiccation, inventing technologies, and concepts for working in low-water environments, engineering proteins, cells, and organisms to increase desiccation tolerance, and building a national community of desiccation scientists. Research at walii will impact society by finding new, desiccation-tolerance-based strategies for crop loss prevention, developing dry storage solutions for storing medicines currently stored cold, and mitigating ongoing decreases in species diversity. Establishing a national, integrated research community requires an expert, multidisciplinary workforce, and integration with the public. To that end, the walii training programs will support career development for over 100 scientists from diverse backgrounds at all career stages, and its outreach initiatives will invite the public to join walii?s scientists in desiccation tolerance experiments. Concepts and tools in life sciences have been made primarily in the context of fully hydrated systems. Walii will study the interaction of life and water across timescales and hydration states in diverse organisms, using four intertwined themes: 1) physical and molecular determinants of desiccation tolerance; 2) molecular and cellular rehydration responses across the continuum of desiccation sensitivity; 3) the role(s) of intrinsically disordered proteins in conferring desiccation tolerance; and 4) short- and long-term evolutionary histories of desiccation tolerance. The multiscale, transdisciplinary studies of anhydrobiosis at walii aim to ignite a transformative new field of solid-state biology, focused first on modeling function and dysfunction of biomolecules, cells, tissues, and organisms under desiccation stress. New methods and approaches will be essential, including better protocols for seedbank preservation and stabilizing plant sexual reproduction, better water-resistant materials and water-retention strategies, and sensitive in vivo tools for sensing and manipulating cellular responses to desiccation. Walii combines the expertise of researchers from several disciplines such as biophysics, cell biology, computational biology, desiccation tolerance, evolutionary biology, ecology, genetics, and plant, animal, seed, fungal, and pollen physiology and diverse organizations such as non-profit research institutes, universities, hispanic serving institutions, and primarily undergraduate institutions. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.- subawards are not planned for this award.

Transactions

Action Obligated Date
Amendment $2,486,093
Amendment $0
Amendment $2,433,040
Amendment $0
Amendment $2,381,852
Original award $3,751,724

Subawards

Subrecipient Amount Awarded
University Of Wyoming Prof. Boothby serves as the Theme 1 lead for this project. As such he assists with administrative and reporting responsibilities for Theme 1. Scientifically,… $1,011,440
University Of Illinois BII: Life without water: protecting macromolecules, cells, and organisms during desiccation and rehydration across kingdoms of life The UIUC portion of this… $298,059
California State University Channel Islands Objectives: The overall objective of this institute is to garner a better understanding of how a select group of organisms can tolerate and sometimes flourish… $901,348
Syracuse University Project overview: Organismal desiccation - resulting from water evaporation - concentrates cell contents and brings them close together. As a result,… $202,742
University Of Utah The purpose of this project is to create visualizations (including 3d models and animations) that describe model organisms and processes studied by WALII-funded… $49,904
Baylor College Of Medicine Project Description: Our objective is to use synthetic biology combined with microscopy- and holotomography-based approaches to understand how biological… $141,355
The Washington University Project Description: Our objective is to use computational approaches (molecular simulations, bioinformatics, and machine learning) to aid our understanding… $81,755
Carnegie Institution Of Washington The Burlacot/Rhee and Moi labs at Carnegie will be working on Themes 1, 2, and 4 of the WALII project, which involve characterizing the biophysical,… $166,687
University Of Wisconsin System Desiccation tolerance is the ability to dry to equilibrium with air that is moderately to extremely dry and regain normal function after rehydration. We propose… $195,793
The Regents Of The University Of California The Moi Exposito- Alonso lab at UC Berkeley will be working on Themes 4 of the WALII project, which involve characterizing natural genetic variation in growth… $159,318
The Regents Of The University Of California $154,342
The Washington University Our objective is to use computational approaches (molecular simulations, bioinformatics, and machine learning) to aid our understanding of how biological… $141,018
University Of Wisconsin System This is a collaborative proposal to elucidate cellular and molecular changes associated to the ability of certain cells and organisms to survive desiccation and… $344,959
University Of Utah The purpose of this project is to create visualizations (including 3d models and animations) that describe model organisms and processes studied by WALII-funded… $49,904
Carnegie Institution Of Washington The Burlacot/Rhee and Moi labs at Carnegie will be working on Themes 1, 2, and 4 of the WALII project, which involve characterizing the biophysical,… $638,372
Baylor College Of Medicine Project Description: Our objective is to use synthetic biology combined with microscopy- and holotomography-based approaches to understand how biological… $256,847
California State University Channel Islands Objectives: The overall objective of this institute is to garner a better understanding of how a select group of organisms can tolerate and sometimes flourish… $255,588
University Of Wyoming Prof. Boothby serves as the Theme 1 lead for this project. As such he assists with administrative and reporting responsibilities for Theme 1. Scientifically,… $208,107
The Regents Of The University Of California The Moi Exposito-Alonso lab at UC Berkeley will be working on Themes 4 of the WALII project, which involve characterizing natural genetic variation in growth… $64,227
The Washington University Project Description: Our objective is to use computational approaches (molecular simulations, bioinformatics, and machine learning) to aid our understanding… $82,216
University Of California, Merced Organismal desiccation - resulting from water evaporation - concentrates cell contents and brings them close together. As a result, molecules are crowded and… $75,252
Baylor College Of Medicine Project Description: Our objective is to use synthetic biology combined with microscopy- and holotomography-based approaches to understand how biological… $148,794
University Of Utah The purpose of this project is to create visualizations (including 3d models and animations) that describe model organisms and processes studied by WALII-funded… $49,904
University Of Wisconsin System This is a collaborative proposal to elucidate cellular and molecular changes associated to the ability of certain cells and organisms to survive desiccation and… $194,228
Carnegie Institution Of Washington The Burlacot/Rhee and Moi labs at Carnegie will be working on Themes 1, 2, and 4 of the WALII project, which involve characterizing the biophysical,… $691,509
Show all 25

Quick answers

Who received award 2419923?

2419923 was awarded to Michigan State University by Division of Biological Infrastructure (National Science Foundation) on October 1, 2023.

How much is award 2419923 worth?

$11,052,709 has been obligated on 2419923.

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