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New Research Education Program to Enhance Diversity in the Neurosciences

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NIH Blueprint for Neuroscience Research

The NIH Blueprint for Neuroscience Research, which NIGMS actively participates in, recently announced the Blueprint Program for Enhancing Neuroscience Diversity through Undergraduate Research Education Experiences (BP-ENDURE).

The program will support the development of collaborative research education partnerships to increase the number of students from underrepresented groups who are well-prepared to enter and complete Ph.D. degree programs in the neurosciences. It will connect academic enhancement and research training activities at research-intensive institutions (such as those participating in the Jointly Sponsored Institutional Predoctoral Training Programs and the Initiative for Maximizing Student Development (IMSD) Program) and institutions that have substantial enrollments of undergraduate students from underrepresented groups majoring in areas relevant to the neurosciences. These activities must be designed to increase students’ interest in the neurosciences and better prepare them for graduate studies in the field.

The deadline to submit a letter of intent is February 24, 2010, and the application deadline is March 24, 2010. Please see the funding opportunity announcement or contact me if you need more information.

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Propose Research Using the World’s Most Powerful Supercomputer

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How to Get Involved

Watch Videocast on
Dec. 17, 2-4 p.m.

The Blue Waters petascale computing system, under construction by the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) Link to external website at the University of Illinois, will be the most powerful computer in the world when it comes online in 2011. The National Science Foundation is currently soliciting proposals for computing time Link to external website to explore big questions that can’t be addressed with other existing computer systems.

We will be hosting a virtual workshop and applicant briefing on Blue Waters to encourage our grantees to develop high-impact community proposals for computing time on this very important new resource. Given the amount of NIGMS-supported biological and biomedical research that utilizes a variety of computing platforms, we think there are a lot of great research opportunities.

The videocast is scheduled for Thursday, Dec. 17, from 2-4 p.m. You will be able to access it at http://videocast.nih.gov/summary.asp?live=8324. During the discussion, we will tell you about the opportunity, identify areas of science within the NIGMS mission that may benefit from Blue Waters, and help interested scientists form collaborations to submit proposals.

Presenters include Jeremy Berg, Stephen Meacham from NSF, Eric Jakobsson and Thom Dunning from the University of Illinois, and John Moult from the University of Maryland. You may join the live discussion by e-mailing questions and comments via the NIH Videocast Web site or by sending them to me. You also can send me your ideas or questions ahead of time.

Because of the considerable NIGMS investment in protein folding and prediction of protein structure from sequence, we will explore this area during the videocast. We realize that many other areas within the NIGMS mission may also benefit from access to Blue Waters, and we welcome discussion about those as well.

We have also set up a Web site where you can post your ideas and interests in using Blue Waters and/or forming collaborations.

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First Human Embryonic Stem Cell Lines Approved Under New Guidelines Now Available

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NIH Director Francis Collins announced today that the first 13 human embryonic stem cell (hESC) lines to be approved under the new NIH Guidelines for Human Stem Cell Research have been placed on the NIH Human Embryonic Stem Cell Registry, and NIH grantees may now use them. These lines were not previously eligible for NIH funding under the 2001 guidelines.

Investigators whose grants were awarded with restrictions on using the funds for hESC research should check the registry to determine if any of the lines are suitable for their projects. Please see today’s NIH Guide notice for more details, including procedures on how to request that the award restrictions be lifted.

An additional 96 lines have been submitted for inclusion in the registry. We expect that more will become eligible for use in the coming months.

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NIH Public Access Policy

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What should I do?I recently had several peer-reviewed scientific manuscripts accepted. As an NIH-funded investigator (with an intramural laboratory in the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases), I complied with the NIH Public Access Policy and deposited the articles in NIH PubMed Central. I also included the PubMed Central ID numbers (PMCIDs) in my CV list of scientific publications.

I wanted to take this opportunity to remind other NIH-funded investigators of the public access policy, which also requires the inclusion of PMCIDs in all applications and progress reports, including those for training grants and fellowships. If a PubMed Central submission by a journal is in process and you do not have a PMCID yet, you can indicate “PMC Journal – In Process” at the end of the citation. If you have submitted the manuscript and so far only received an NIH Manuscript Submission System reference number (NIHMSID), NIH will accept it as a placeholder for the PMCID.

One area of confusion is that PMCIDs are not the same as PMIDs assigned by PubMed.

NIH’s frequently asked questions helped guide me through the PubMed Central submission process, and you may find the information there useful, as well.

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New Resource to Address Glycoscience Bottlenecks

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There are over 750 human enzymes dedicated to glycan synthesis, catabolism and recognition. They include glycosyltrasferases (GTs) and glycoside hydrolases (GHs). While there is tremendous demand for these enzymes in the scientific community, few are available in sufficient quantities for synthetic purposes or for structural/functional studies. Not surprisingly, glyco-enzymes are exceptionally underrepresented in the Protein Data Bank.

To help overcome these bottlenecks, NIGMS is partnering with NIH’s National Center for Research Resources to provide a two-year Recovery Act supplement to the NCRR-sponsored Resource for Integrated Glycotechnology at the University of Georgia. The center will draw additional expertise from investigators at the University of Arizona and University of Wyoming to generate libraries of gateway and expression vectors for glyco-enzymes. The gateway and expression libraries for these enzymes will begin to be made available to the scientific community over the next few months.

The team also will work to express and distribute a subset of these enzymes. Your input for this expression effort is welcome. Please direct inquiries regarding these vectors/enzymes to Kelley Moremen.

This new repository for mammalian GT and GH libraries will speed expansion of the chemical space for carbohydrates as well as speed structural and biochemical studies of these enzymes. The resource should benefit multiple scientific communities and accelerate progress on both the basic biology of the enzymes and their use for development of screening tools (arrays), diagnostics and therapeutics.

The GT and GH expression vectors libraries also may be a useful resource for researchers planning to respond to the upcoming PSI:Biology program announcements mentioned in an earlier post.

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Using Social Media

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Twitter and Facebook iconsWe launched the Feedback Loop blog about six months ago. What do you think so far? You can e-mail me or share comments about our post topics, frequency, e-mail alerts, general usefulness, etc. I’d also like your thoughts on how we can create more opportunities for you to join the conversation by posting comments.

This blog was our first foray into the new world of social media. Since then, we’ve launched a Twitter feed Link to external web site and Facebook page Link to external web site to inform the public about NIGMS-funded research advances and our science education materials. NIH is also on Twitter Link to external web site and Facebook Link to external web site with health-related material for the public as well as a separate Twitter feed for funding opportunities Link to external web site.

If you have suggestions for additional ways we could use social or other media tools to keep you informed, please share them with me or on the Feedback Loop.

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Noncompeting Grant Awards Under the Continuing Resolution

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On October 30, the President signed Public Law 111-88, which includes appropriations for NIH to operate at Fiscal Year 2009 levels through December 18, 2009.

During this period, NIH will make noncompeting research grant awards at reduced levels, typically up to 90% of the previously committed level. This approach is consistent with our practice in previous years.

The policy affects research grants. Research training grants and fellowship awards will not be affected.

NIH anticipates that noncompeting awards will be adjusted upward once the level of the final appropriation has been established.

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Research Resources for the Scientific Community

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Through initiatives such as “glue” grants, the Protein Structure Initiative, the Models of Infectious Disease Agent Study, the Pharmacogenetics Research Network and in other ways, NIGMS-supported researchers develop resources, information and opportunities of value to broad segments of the scientific community. A list of major NIGMS-funded Web sites and portals is available on our Web site.

I invite you to explore these resources, and I welcome your comments about them.

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Stetten Lecturer Illustrates Payoffs of Curiosity-Driven Research

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Bonnie Bassler

The DeWitt Stetten, Jr., Lecture is an annual October event that gives us the opportunity to showcase outstanding scientists and their cutting-edge research to the NIH community.

This year’s speaker, Bonnie Bassler, gave an exceptional talk on quorum sensing in bacteria, and I highly encourage you to watch the videocast. Bonnie’s work is yet another illustration of how curiosity-driven research–in this case, into why bioluminescent bacteria only glow at high cell densities–can reveal fundamental biological processes that would have been very difficult to foresee with more directed research approaches. The potential applications of Bonnie’s discoveries include the prevention of dangerous biofilms and the development of new antibiotics and rational probiotics.

Adding to this year’s Stetten Lecture excitement were the Nobel Prizes to past speakers (Elizabeth Blackburn in 1990 and Ada Yonath and Venki Ramakrishnan (along with Peter Moore) in 2000). We’ve previously featured several Nobel laureates as lecturers after they won the prize, but this is the first time the lecture preceded the prizes. We’ll see if the trend continues!

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Job Opportunity in Social and Behavioral Modeling

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We’re looking for a program officer (or “health scientist administrator”) to oversee grants and other activities related to social and behavior modeling—a research area that complements NIGMS-supported efforts to understand complex systems, including disease spread among human populations and dynamics in model organism communities.

The job is within the NIGMS Center for Bioinformatics and Computational Biology. The center supports research and training programs that address the computational needs of today’s biomedical research, serving critical roles across NIGMS as well as NIH.

Please see the job announcement for more details and forward this information to anyone who might be interested in this position. Individual inquiries can be sent to me.

The listing closes November 13, 2009.