Understanding the Rules of Life: Microbiome Theory and Mechanisms | 20 513

Opportunity Information: Apply for 20 513

The National Science Foundation (NSF) funding opportunity "Understanding the Rules of Life: Microbiome Theory and Mechanisms" (URoLMTM) is part of NSF's broader "Big Ideas" initiative, a set of long-term priorities meant to push research at the frontiers of science and engineering through convergence and cross-disciplinary collaboration. This program sits under the "Understanding the Rules of Life: Predicting Phenotype" Big Idea, which centers on a core challenge in biology: predicting an organism's observable traits (phenotypes) from its genetic makeup and the environment it experiences. Although proposals are submitted through NSF's Division of Emerging Frontiers in the Directorate for Biological Sciences (BIO/EF), the solicitation is explicitly cross-NSF, with proposals managed by a team of program directors spanning multiple disciplines and organizational units within the agency.

At its heart, URoLMTM aims to move microbiome research beyond description and correlation and toward theory-driven, mechanistic, and predictive understanding. NSF is looking for projects that explain how microbiomes are structured and how they function, and especially how cause-and-effect relationships operate within microbiomes and across the microbiome-host-environment system. The term "microbiome" is used broadly here, meaning collections of microbes in a given habitat, including but not limited to host-associated microbiomes (such as those linked to humans, animals, plants, or other organisms) as well as environmental microbiomes in soil, water, built environments, and other contexts. The program emphasizes that microbiomes can influence host physiology, behavior, development, and fitness; that hosts can shape the microbiome's metabolism, dynamics, and evolution; and that the surrounding environment (including biological, chemical, physical, and even social dimensions) both affects and is affected by host-microbiome interactions.

NSF highlights that recent technological and analytical advances have made it much easier to identify which microbes are present in a system and to measure relevant environmental variables. As a result, the field now has abundant descriptive datasets and many plausible hypotheses about microbiome roles in health, ecosystem function, and system dysfunction. The major gap, and the reason for this program, is the need to integrate these data into causal explanations and generalizable theories that work across scales, from molecules and cells up through organisms, communities, and entire biomes, and across time scales ranging from sub-second dynamics to evolutionary and geologic time. In NSF's framing, this is part of discovering the "Rules of Life": the kinds of conceptual models and theoretical constructs that can explain and predict how living systems behave.

URoLMTM invites integrated, interdisciplinary proposals that combine theory development with strong experimental and/or computational strategies to generate and test hypotheses. Competitive projects are expected to build predictive frameworks rather than simply collecting additional correlational observations. Areas of interest include, for example, applying or extending ecological and evolutionary theory to explain microbiome function and interactions; developing new computational, mathematical, or experimental tools to model microbiome dynamics; uncovering molecular mechanisms that enable communication between hosts and microbiomes or among microbes within a microbiome; and using comparative analyses across microbiomes to identify emergent properties that reveal broader principles about living systems. The solicitation also flags interest in how microbiome relationships shape robustness, resilience, and adaptability at the level of individual organisms, populations, or communities, which fits the broader "predicting phenotype" theme.

A central requirement is genuine convergence across more than one research discipline. NSF explicitly lists fields such as biology, chemistry, computer science, engineering, geosciences, mathematics, physics, and the social and behavioral sciences as potential contributors, and expects projects to integrate perspectives and methods rather than placing disciplines side-by-side. Along with the science, NSF stresses best practices for rigor and reproducibility, including careful protocol documentation, sound sample selection and study design, transparent data collection and analysis workflows, responsible model and algorithm development, and meaningful data sharing and accessibility. The interdisciplinary nature of the program is also intended to create strong training and outreach components, supporting the development of researchers who are fluent across multiple scientific approaches and helping connect microbiome science to broader society.

URoLMTM supports basic research and offers two funding tracks based on project scope. Track 1 supports projects up to $500,000 total over up to 3 years, while Track 2 supports larger, more ambitious efforts up to $3,000,000 total over up to 5 years. The opportunity is offered as a grant mechanism under NSF's research and development activity categories, with an expected number of awards listed as 12 in the source information. The opportunity was created on November 5, 2019, with an original closing date of March 2, 2020, and eligibility is listed broadly with additional clarification referenced in the solicitation. Overall, the program is designed for teams that can connect microbiome data to testable mechanisms and predictive theory, and that can extract general principles that apply across different microbiome systems and biological scales.

• The National Science Foundation in the science and technology and other research and development sector is offering a public funding opportunity titled "Understanding the Rules of Life: Microbiome Theory and Mechanisms" and is now available to receive applicants.
• Interested and eligible applicants and submit their applications by referencing the CFDA number(s): 47.041, 47.049, 47.050, 47.070, 47.074, 47.075, 47.076, 47.079, 47.083.
• This funding opportunity was created on Nov 05, 2019.
• Applicants must submit their applications by Mar 02, 2020. (Agency may still review applications by suitable applicants for the remaining/unused allocated funding in 2026.)
• The number of recipients for this funding is limited to 12 candidate(s).
• Eligible applicants include: Others (see text field entitled Additional Information on Eligibility for clarification).

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