NSF Engineering Research Center for Precision Microbiome Engineering (PreMiEr)

NSF 精密微生物组工程研究中心 (PreMiEr)

• 批准号: 2133504
• 负责人: Claudia Gunsch
• 金额: $ 2600万
• 依托单位: Duke University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Cooperative Agreement
• 财政年份: 2022
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2022-09-01 至 2027-08-31
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2133504&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: NSF; Engineering; Research; Center; Precision

Microbes have colonized and adapted to most every environment on Earth, including the built environments that humans have created, such as the homes where we live and the pipes that bring us drinking water. It has been well established that microbial communities, or microbiomes, that colonize people have a direct influence on human health. The microbiome of the built environment, in particular, has gained increasing recognition for its key role in human health through its interaction with the human microbiome. However, despite this knowledge, no systematic infrastructure exists to decipher how microbial systems adapt to and grow within built environments, impeding our ability to diagnose built environment health and harness the power inherent to those microbiomes. The Engineering Research Center for Precision Microbiome Engineering (PreMiEr) will create microbiome-based diagnostic tools and develop microbiome engineering approaches to monitor and operate built environments that maximize human health protection. Informed by societal needs and research-stakeholder teams, PreMiEr’s research design will work to prevent the spread of infectious agents, promote the colonization of beneficial microorganisms, and lead to strategies for controlling pandemics and antibiotic resistance—phenomena that have led to over six million deaths worldwide (as of June 2022) and cost the global economy an estimated $8 trillion in the last year alone. Integral to its research vision, PreMiEr will create diverse and inclusive interdisciplinary research and training hubs where engineers, microbiologists, social scientists, and ethicists work alongside theorists, model builders, and computational scientists to develop technologies that enable transformative engineering discoveries in safe, sustainable and responsible ways.Our capacity to engineer microbiomes requires a fundamental understanding of concepts of community ecology and an ability to track, control, and model those interactions. To apply microbiome engineering to real-world systems, community level interactions must be integrated into a comprehensive, scalable modeling framework that requires iterative evaluation and validation in model testbeds. PreMiEr’s research organization is designed to generate fundamental understanding across these levels and functionalities, culminating in the development of a framework that enables the biodesign of smart and healthy built environments. PreMiEr will leverage advances in high-throughput genomic sequencing, high-resolution mass spectrometry, computational performance, and statistical modeling to unravel previously unknown mechanistic interactions. Enabling technologies will be developed to detect and define interactions in the built environment, including approaches that probe microbial dark matter for the development of built-environment health diagnostic tools; methods for targeted delivery of desired genetic features and microbial vectors; tools for fine in situ functional tuning; and predictive scalable statistical microbiome engineering models that consider high dimensionality, sparsity, and heterogeneity. These new technology elements will enable us to test hypotheses related to microbiome assembly and function. Importantly, by incorporating social scientists and ethicists into PreMiEr’s research framework, non-social scientists’ work will be informed by consideration of the ethical, societal, and policy implications of their microbiome engineering discoveries. Through rigorous evaluation and iterative refinement of curricula, and institutional practices designed to support a culture of convergence and the dissemination of findings, PreMiEr will contribute to best practices in domestic training. The PreMiEr ERC will include targeted recruitment of trainees from underrepresented groups, building upon existing partnerships with our nation’s largest HBCU, and will provide immersion in research and training at the interface of multiple disciplines to address complex challenges. PreMiEr will train the next generation of diverse and highly motivated engineers and scientists in technical and professional skills to compete in the emerging arenas of microbial science and engineering. Ultimately, our work will advance collaborations and discovery focused on environmental microbiomes to engineer healthy built environments.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.

微生物已殖民并适应了地球上大多数环境，包括人类创造的建筑环境，例如我们居住的房屋以及为我们带来饮用水的管道。已经有很好的确定，微生物群落或微生物群体会直接影响人类健康。特别是，建筑环境的微生物组通过与人类微生物组的相互作用而对其在人类健康中的关键作用获得了越来越多的认识。但是，这种知识，没有系统的基础设施来破译微生物系统如何在建筑环境中适应和生长，从而阻碍了我们诊断出建筑环境健康和利用这些微生物构成的力量的能力。精密微生物组工程工程研究中心（Premier）将创建基于微生物组的诊断工具，并开发微生物组工程方法，以监视和操作建筑环境，从而最大程度地提高人类健康保护。在社会需求和研究利益相关者团队的情况下，Premier的研究设计将致力于防止传染性药物的传播，促进有益的微生物的殖民化，并带来控制大流传学和抗生素耐药性的策略，这些抗生素耐药性（导致全球6月2022年6月的全球经济均超过600万人死亡，并获得了全球经济的销量，并获得了$ 8的经济估计。与其研究愿景不可或缺的一部分，高级人士将创建潜水员和包容性的跨学科研究和培训中心，工程师，微生物学家，社会科学家，社会科学家和伦理学家与理论家，模型建筑商和计算科学家一起开发技术，从而在安全，可持续的能力和责任的能力中，能力和责任的能力和概念的概念概念概念，从而开发技术的能力和责任的能力。互动。要将微生物组工程应用于现实世界系统，必须将社区级别的互动集成到一个全面的，可扩展的建模框架中，该框架需要在模型测试台上进行迭代评估和验证。 Premier的研究组织旨在在这些级别和功能上产生基本的理解，最终达到一个框架的开发，该框架可以实现智能健康的建筑环境的生物设计。 Premier将利用高通量基因组测序，高分辨率质谱，计算性能和统计模型的进步来揭示以前未知的机械相互作用。将开发启用技术来检测和定义建筑环境中的相互作用，包括探测微生物暗物质以开发建立环境健康诊断工具的方法；目标递送所需的遗传特征和微生物载体的方法；用于原位功能调整的工具；以及考虑高维，稀疏性和异质性的可预测性可扩展的统计微生物组工程模型。这些新技术要素将使我们能够测试与微生物组组装和功能有关的假设。重要的是，通过将社会科学家和伦理学家纳入Premier的研究框架，非社会科学家的工作将通过考虑其微生物组工程发现的道德，社会和政策影响来告知。通过对课程的严格评估和迭代性完善，以及旨在支持融合文化和调查结果传播的机构实践，总理将为家庭培训的最佳实践做出贡献。总理ERC将包括来自代表性不足的群体的有针对性的招聘受训者，这是基于与我们国家最大的HBCU的现有合作伙伴关系，并将在多个学科的界面中沉迷于研究和培训，以应对复杂的挑战。 Premier将在技术和专业技能上培训下一代潜水员和高度积极进取的工程师和科学家，以在微生物科学和工程的新兴领域竞争。最终，我们的工作将推进关注环境微生物组的合作和发现，以设计健康的建筑环境。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识分子优点和更广泛的审查标准评估来诚实地获得支持。