Quantum-Enabled Bioimaging and Sensing Approaches for Bioenergy
Funding Agency:
- Department of Energy
The DOE SC program in Biological and Environmental Research (BER), through its Bioimaging Research effort, announces its interest in receiving applications to advance fundamental research or use-inspired technologies of new bioimaging or sensing approaches that exploit quantum phenomena. Applications must describe how they would advance knowledge and predictive understanding of plant and microbial systems relevant to bioenergy and environmental research in fields of study supported by BER. Projects that incorporate quantum science concepts to enhance spatial and temporal resolution, measurement speed, long-term sample stability, or sensitivity of bioimaging technologies are desirable. Proposed research should demonstrate a comparative advantage over conventional methods.
Classical optical imaging approaches have limitations and technical challenges for live biological systems because of inherent physical constraints of illumination and detection and because sensitive biological molecules and processes are challenging to detect selectively and without perturbation. Physical limitations of classical optical instrumentation include spatial resolution optical diffraction, signal-to-noise limited by fundamental photon or shot noise and detection over very short or very long-time intervals with sufficiently bright, stable reporters. Limitations inherent to intact biological samples that are relevant to complex living systems include light scattering and diffraction in thick samples - a major barrier to imaging biological processes deep within tissue; and photo-damage that perturbs cellular chemistry for in situ imaging, alters biological processes in living systems, or renders the sample useless for repeat imaging. Conventional bioimaging presents trade-offs of spatial resolution, temporal resolution, signal detection limits, sample perturbation, or target sensitivity. Improvement in one imaging characteristic is often accompanied by a concomitant reduction in other characteristics. Imaging limitations of classical approaches can be surmounted by modifying illumination methods, microscope systems or light detectors. Biological limitations could be overcome with unanticipated advantages of quantum approaches such as greater range of application to biological samples in challenging environments (including opaque soil and anaerobic medium), detection of novel target characteristics relevant to biological function, and expanded capacity for evaluating established hypotheses of cellular function, or to inspire new biological hypotheses based on novel information.
Multiple awards; Award Ceiling: $750,000
DOE anticipates a total of $15 million.
Submission Deadline for Pre-Applications: January 14, 2022, at 5:00 PM Eastern Time A Pre-Application is required Pre-Application Response Date: February 3, 2022, at 5:00 PM Eastern Time Submission Deadline for Applications: April 4, 2022, at 11:59 PM Eastern Time