The Collier Report of U.S. Government Contracting

Sampling of Federal Government Funding Actions/Set Asides

In order by amount of set aside monies.

• $8,441 - Friday the 14th of December 2012
  Agricultural Research Service
  USDA ARS SEA 7B31
  IGF::OT::IGF "OTHER FUNCTIONS" AFFY-IVT EXPRESS LABELING

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• $8,046 - Friday the 14th of December 2012
  Agricultural Research Service
  USDA ARS SEA 7B31
  IGF::OT::IGF "OTHER FUNCTIONS" COTTON MICROARRAY ANALYSIS (LABELING ONLY)

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• $249,395 - Friday the 10th of July 2015
  National Aeronautics And Space Administration
  NASA SHARED SERVICES CENTER
  UTILIZING THE ADVANCED BIOLOGICAL RESEARCH SYSTEM (ABRS) ON THE INTERNATIONAL SPACE STATION (ISS) TO UNCOVER MICROGRAVITY'S IMPACT ON ROOT DEVELOPMENT AND CELL WALL ARCHITECTURE. THE OVERALL GOAL OF THIS PROPOSAL IS TO UNCOVER THE UNDERLYING MOLECULAR MECHANISMS BY WHICH MICROGRAVITY IMPACTS CELL WALL ARCHITECTURE IN THE MODEL PLANT ARABIDOPSIS THALIANA USING THE ADVANCED BIOLOGICAL RESEARCH SYSTEM (ABRS) HOUSED ON THE INTERNATIONAL SPACE STATION (ISS). THIS PROPOSAL BUILDS ON A ROBUST DATASET FROM OUR RAPID TURNAROUND SPACEFLIGHT EXPERIMENTS, WHICH UTILIZED THE BIOLOGICAL RESEARCH IN CANISTERS (BRIC16) HARDWARE ON THE STS-131 MISSION. THROUGH EXPERIMENTS WITH THE BRIC HARDWARE, WE DISCOVERED THAT SPACEFLIGHT HAD A PROFOUND INFLUENCE ON THE EXPRESSION OF GENES INVOLVED IN REGULATING CELL WALL ARCHITECTURE. THIS LED US TO HYPOTHESIZE THAT PLANTS RESPOND TO MICROGRAVITY IN LARGE PART THROUGH THE TRANSCRIPTIONAL REPROGRAMMING OF GENES THAT CONTROL CELL WALL REMODELING. BECAUSE OF THE PROMINENT ROOT DEVELOPMENTAL PHENOTYPES (I.E. PRIMARY ROOT SKEWING AND INHIBITION OF ROOT HAIR GROWTH) THAT WE OBSERVED IN OUR BRIC EXPERIMENTS, IT APPEARS THAT MICROGRAVITY-DEPENDENT CHANGES IN CELL WALL-RELATED TRANSCRIPTS ARE PREDOMINANTLY MANIFESTED IN ROOTS. FURTHERMORE, BECAUSE PRIMARY ROOT AND ROOT CELL WALL ULTRASTRUCTURAL DEFECTS WERE MOST PRONOUNCED IN A MUTANT TO A VEGETATIVE ACTIN ISOFORM (ACT2), WE HYPOTHESIZE THAT MICROGRAVITY PREDOMINANTLY AFFECTS GENES THAT LIE WITHIN SIGNALING NETWORKS LINKING THE ACTIN CYTOSKELETON WITH THE PLANT EXTRACELLULAR MATRIX. GIVEN OUR SUCCESSFUL EXPERIMENTS WITH BRIC, WE ARE IN AN EXCELLENT POSITION TO EFFECTIVELY UTILIZE THE UNIQUE CAPABILITIES OF THE ABRS HARDWARE ON THE ISS TO TEST THE AFOREMENTIONED HYPOTHESES. WE WILL USE A NEW ALGORITHM THAT WE DEVELOPED FROM OUR BRIC16 EXPERIMENTS TO MORE RIGOROUSLY QUANTIFY ROOT GROWTH BEHAVIOR OF WILD-TYPE AND A HIGHER ORDER VEGETATIVE ACTIN MUTANT (ACT2 ACT8 DOUBLE MUTANT) (AIM 1). THIS WILL CLARIFY THE EXTENT OF ACTIN INVOLVEMENT IN SPECIFYING ROOT ORIENTATION AND CELL WALL REMODELING IN SPACE. THROUGH THE USE OF MONOCLONAL ANTIBODIES AND IMMUNOCYTOCHEMISTRY, WE WILL ALSO DETERMINE HOW THE DISTRIBUTION AND ABUNDANCE OF SPECIFIC CELL WALL COMPONENTS CHANGE IN MICROGRAVITY, AND CORRELATE SUCH CHANGES WITH ROOT DEVELOPMENTAL RESPONSES AND MODIFICATIONS IN GENE EXPRESSION (AIM 2). FINALLY, WE WILL EMPLOY MORE SENSITIVE DEEP SEQUENCING TECHNOLOGIES (E.G. RNA-SEQ) TO DISCOVER NOVEL MICROGRAVITY-INDUCED TRANSCRIPTIONAL CHANGES IN PLANTS (AIM 3). KNOWLEDGE FROM OUR SPACEFLIGHT STUDIES WILL THEN BE TRANSLATED INTO CORRESPONDING GENE FUNCTIONAL STUDIES (E.G. MUTANT ANALYSIS AND OVEREXPRESSION), WHICH WE EXPECT WILL LEAD TO THE DISCOVERY OF NEW PLAYERS THAT MODULATE ROOT DEVELOPMENT ON EARTH AND IN MICROGRAVITY. THE PROPOSED WORK IS THEREFORE RELEVANT TO THIS NASA-NRA BECAUSE IT WILL ADDRESS FUNDAMENTAL QUESTIONS ON HOW GRAVITY MODULATES THE PLANT S INTERNAL CYTOARCHITECTURE AND THE MOLECULAR PROCESSES THAT GOVERN THE DEVELOPMENT OF ITS CELL WALLS. THIS WILL BE SIGNIFICANT FOR NASA S MISSION AS EXTRAPOLATED IN THE PRIORITIES OF THE FUNDAMENTAL SPACE BIOLOGY PLAN FOR 2010-2020 BECAUSE IT WILL PROVIDE US WITH BASIC KNOWLEDGE TO GUIDE GENETIC ENGINEERING EFFORTS TO GENERATE PLANTS THAT ARE BETTER ADAPTED TO THE WEIGHTLESS ENVIRONMENT OF SPACEFLIGHT. THIS IN TURN WILL BE BENEFICIAL FOR THE DESIGN OF LARGE PLANT HABITATS ON THE ISS AND FUTURE SPACE COLONIES.

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