This Project Grant award of $408,007 from the National Science Foundation (NSF) Engineering program (CFDA 47.041) aims to develop a technology called "glycosequencing" that uses next-generation sequencing (NGS) to sequence and quantify glycan structures. The project will first identify an optimal set of lectins, biochemically characterize them, and prepare lectin barcoding for NGS. It will also build a training dataset using recombinant proteins produced in glycoengineered Chinese...
The National Science Foundation Division of Molecular and Cellular Biosciences awarded a $488,204 Project Grant to the University of Texas at Austin under the Biological Sciences federal grant program (CFDA 47.074) with a completion date of June 30, 2025. The grant supports research using epitranscriptomics to study how chemically-induced changes in RNA molecules within biological cells in response to environmental stressors can be used to track and control stress responses. An interdisciplinary...
This National Science Foundation (NSF) Biological Sciences program award to the University of Texas at Austin provides $650,195 over 3 years to investigate regulatory mechanisms used by RNA-binding proteins within a bacterial central carbon metabolism network. The researchers will use experimental and computational tools to: (i) explore the formation of bacterial condensates as a post-transcriptional gene regulation mechanism, and (ii) elucidate dynamic regulatory outcomes from alternative usage...
The National Science Foundation (NSF) Division of Molecular and Cellular Biosciences awarded a $503,000 Project Grant to the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley (UTRGV) under the Biological Sciences program (CFDA 47.074) to study the roles of RNA modifications in regulating responses to abiotic stresses like drought and heat in cereal crops. The project aims to identify novel regulatory mechanisms and new targets for improving drought and heat tolerance in crops like sorghum, maize, rice,...
This Project Grant award from the National Science Foundation (NSF) Biological Sciences program (CFDA 47.074) was made to William Marsh Rice University in the amount of $136,600, with a period of performance from March 1, 2025 to February 28, 2030. The project aims to develop and apply advanced tools to directly visualize, quantify, and correlate DNA dynamics, organization, and gene activity in real-time within human cells. The research will yield insights into how genomic structure,...
The National Science Foundation awarded a $359,348 Project Grant to the University of Texas at Austin under the Engineering program (CFDA 47.041) for research titled "COLLABORATIVE RESEARCH: ULTRASENSITIVE NUCLEIC ACID SENSING TOOLS BASED ON CAS ASSAYS AND SOLID-STATE NANOPORES." The three-year award beginning March 1, 2021 will support the development of new nucleic acid sensing technologies using Cas assays and solid-state nanopores with the goal of improving detection...
This Project Grant award from the National Science Foundation (NSF) Biological Sciences program (CFDA 47.074) provides $171,061 to the University of Texas at Arlington (UTA) from February 2025 to January 2030. The project's goal is to uncover the mechanistic details of how the overlapping networks of RNA interference (RNAi) and chromatin modifying pathways maintain appropriate gene regulation during stress in the C. elegans germline model system. The research will advance the understanding of...
This $299,999 National Science Foundation project grant under the Biological Sciences program (CFDA 47.074) will support research exploring the RNA world and RNA-peptide world hypotheses using a novel dynamic combinatorial chemistry system at the University of Houston, a minority-serving institution. The two-year project beginning August 1, 2022 aims to advance understanding of the role of RNA and peptides in the origins of life. Investigators will employ a system using benzonuclease to cleave...
This Project Grant award of $658,000 from the National Science Foundation's (NSF) Mathematical and Physical Sciences (CFDA 47.049) program supports Professors Hsin-Chih Yeh and Devleena Samanta at the University of Texas at Austin in developing new types of functional nucleic acid molecules for chemical detection and imaging. The key objectives are to discover catalytic functional nucleic acids that can be transformed into sensitive and selective sensors for diverse chemical and biological...
The National Science Foundation Division of Molecular and Cellular Biosciences awarded $1,299,732 to the University of Texas at Austin under a Project Grant to support research titled "COLLABORATIVE RESEARCH: SYNTHETIC AND SYSTEMS BIOLOGY APPROACHES TO SEMI-SYNTHETIC CELLS WITH EXPANDED DNA ALPHABETS." The three-year award beginning August 15, 2021 falls under the Biological Sciences program (CFDA 47.074) to promote progress in the biological sciences and strengthen the Nation's...
The National Science Foundation (NSF) awarded a $308,299 Project Grant under the Biological Sciences (CFDA 47.074) program to the University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin) to develop novel methods for sequencing, visualizing, and analyzing glycosylated RNAs (glycornas) across diverse organisms including humans, plants, yeast, and bacteria. The project aims to create unbiased enrichment techniques using glycan-specific ligands and advanced sequencing approaches, as well as spatial imaging methods to visualize glycornas at single-cell and tissue levels. The research will establish glycorna profiles, identify conserved motifs, and integrate the data into an open-access database to accelerate scientific discovery in this emerging field of biomolecular research. This effort is expected to enhance the scientific community's ability to study glycornas, ultimately benefiting society through advancements in biotechnology, medicine, and education. The award period is from August 1, 2024 to July 31, 2027.