Cooperative Agreement 58123004682

This $650,000 Project Grant awarded by the U.S. Department of Agriculture's National Institute of Food and Agriculture (USDA NIFA) under the Biotechnology Risk Assessment Research Grants Program (CFDA 10.219) will fund research at Clemson University to investigate the unintended effects of commonly used site-specific recombinase genes (Cre, Flp, PhiC31) when expressed in creeping bentgrass and Arabidopsis plants. The primary objectives are to examine whether and how the recombinases may cause...

The University of Connecticut received a two-year, $225,000 Project Grant from the United States Department of Agriculture National Institute of Food and Agriculture under the Agriculture and Food Research Initiative (AFRI) federal grant program (CFDA 10.310). The grant will fund the creation of a reference genome for eastern hemlock trees and identification of beneficial genetic variations to aid recovery efforts for this threatened species. Using principles of conservation genomics, the...

The Department of Agriculture's National Institute of Food and Agriculture has awarded a $649,818 Project Grant under the Biotechnology Risk Assessment Research Grants (BRAG) program (CFDA 10.219) to the Old Dominion University Research Foundation (doing business as Odurf) to assess the potential for horizontal gene transfer (HGT) from genetically engineered (GE) cyanobacteria to soil-environmental bacteria and risk group-2 microorganisms. The research team will measure the rates of HGT,...

This $1,070,000 National Science Foundation project grant will fund research into understanding how genetic interactions in the model plant Arabidopsis thaliana are influenced by environmental conditions. The Division of Molecular and Cellular Biosciences awarded this three-year grant to the University of Wisconsin-Madison beginning July 1, 2022. The university will use artificial intelligence approaches to measure traits in hundreds of pairs of gene mutants under different temperature...

This three-year, $432,000 National Science Foundation Project Grant under the Biological Sciences program (CFDA 47.074) will fund single-cell research on gene expression and regulatory DNA in glandular trichomes of hemp (Cannabis sativa) flowers. The fellowship, awarded to Lillian Padgett-Cobb and hosted by the Salk Institute for Biological Studies, will apply single-cell experiments including single-cell RNA sequencing and single-cell ATAC sequencing to identify cell types in glandular...

The National Science Foundation Division of Integrative Organismal Systems awarded Rutgers, The State University $1.46 million under the Biological Sciences (CFDA 47.074) federal grant program from September 1, 2022 to August 31, 2025. The project aims to develop a new method for direct chloroplast transformation in Arabidopsis flowers using re-engineered Agrobacterium. Researchers will modify Agrobacterium to deliver T-DNA containing antibiotic resistance markers to plant chloroplasts. They...

The University of Nevada, Reno will use $800,000 in funding from the US Department of Agriculture's National Institute of Food and Agriculture under the Agriculture and Food Research Initiative (AFRI) federal grant program to identify which gene at the Inhibition of Alien Pollen locus controls the ability of alien pollen tubes to reach the ovary during interspecific cross-pollination in sorghum. The researchers will characterize plant morphology, reproductive biology, off-target copy number, and...

This $225,000 Project Grant award from the U.S. Department of Agriculture's (USDA) Agriculture and Food Research Initiative (AFRI) program aims to uncover the role of non-coding DNA sequences in regulating agronomic traits, using the grass awn as a model. The research will focus on three key objectives: 1) Identifying putative regulatory DNA elements across grass genomes, 2) Associating variation in these conserved non-coding sequences with awn traits, and 3) Dissecting the function of...

This $818,000 Project Grant was awarded by the National Science Foundation's (NSF) Biological Sciences program (CFDA 47.074) to the University of North Carolina at Greensboro (UNC-G) to develop efficient genetic transformation techniques for the orphan crop tef (Eragrostis tef) and its wild relative Indian lovegrass (E. pilosa). The key objectives are to: 1) Develop an efficient Agrobacterium-mediated transformation method for diverse tef genotypes to enable trait improvement research, and 2)...

This $752,045 Project Grant from the National Science Foundation's Biological Sciences program (CFDA 47.074) will fund research comparing the genomics of capitulum development across sunflower, daisy, and related plant lineages. The award recipients at Auburn University will generate high-quality genomes and curated gene expression data from inflorescence tissues for multiple species. Comparative genomic and evolutionary analyses will be conducted to decipher the molecular basis of capitulum...