Title: Life in Transition (LiT)
Date: 10/17/08


 National Science Foundation
 4201 Wilson Boulevard
 Arlington, Virginia 22230



 Life in Transition (LiT)
 (NSF 08-078)

 Directorate for Biological Sciences
 Office of the Assistant Director

 October 17, 2008

 Dear Colleague:

 The Biological Sciences Directorate (BIO) is augmenting funding to
 support emerging areas of interdisciplinary research, many of which
 lie at the intersection of the life and physical sciences.
  Priority will be given to projects that address fundamental
 questions about Life in Transition (LiT) including: how the living
 world has and is adapting to and transforming the Earth's
 climate, the diverse strategies by which living systems obtain and
 use energy, and life's origins and indispensable properties.

    * Earth's history is deeply entwined with the evolution
      and proliferation of life, and living systems continue to
      alter and shape Earth's air, land, and water today.
      Earth has  experienced a number of geological and climate
      altering events resulting in profound transformations of the
      living world including vast episodic extinctions of many life
      forms.  What are the principles and mechanisms of resilience
      and sustainability that enable some life forms to survive,
      adapt to, and transform their environment?  What are the
      positive and negative feedback mechanisms affecting the
      interaction of the living and nonliving worlds, including
      Earth's climate system?   How do the inherent properties
      of robustness and fragility of biotic networks and feedback
      loops determine the resilience and susceptibility of life to
      environmental change?   What realistic expectations about the
      direction and magnitude of planetary change can be drawn from
      a comprehensive understanding of how the living world has and
      is shaping Earth's climate?

    * The search for undiscovered life on Earth - including a vast
      and still poorly known microbial world yet to be incorporated
      into fundamental concepts of life's history - has
      begun to expand our knowledge of biological energy
      transduction systems.  How is energy transduction managed by
      living systems of all types and scales and across the diverse
      range of physical environments found on Earth?  How can
      knowledge of these systems contribute to our understanding of
      life's origin and adaptation to changing environments;
      inform the search for life on other worlds; and inspire and
      enable development of scalable biology-based energy
      technologies?

    * The rapidly growing molecular, paleontological, and geological
      record of life on Earth can delimit the likely conditions
      under which life evolved, but cannot explain how life arose on
      Earth.  What are the likely pathways that led from pre-biotic
      inorganic chemistry and geochemistry to the biochemistry of
      life, and then to one or more ancestors to all of life on
      Earth?  What constitutes a "core metabolism" and
      what aspects of metabolic function are related to biological
      diversification beyond that core?    How can the reductive and
      constructive approaches of molecular engineering (synthetic
      biology) define the indispensable properties of life or
       reengineer natural designs and systems?

 We seek to foster transformative advances within and among
 programmatic areas that integrate concepts and observations across
 diverse fields of scholarship relevant to Life in Transition.  We
 are particularly interested in collaborative, interdisciplinary
 proposals that address the aforementioned topics in Life in
 Transition.  The most competitive proposals will integrate
 questions and approaches across disciplines; e.g., in two or more
 divisions in the Biological Sciences (DEB, DBI, IOS, MCB) or one
 division in the Biological Sciences and a division in another NSF
 Directorate.  In addition, the core programmatic areas within BIO
 will continue to address these areas and provide a robust and
 adaptable framework to build our understanding of the biological
 sciences.

 This is not a special competition or new program.  Relevant
 proposals are to be submitted to an existing BIO cluster/program
 according to the regular target or deadline dates.  Target and
 deadline dates for applicable programmatic areas may be found on
 cluster web pages in each division of BIO, accessible from the BIO
 homepage at www.nsf.gov/BIO.  For full proposals submitted via
 FastLane, standard Grant Proposal Guidelines apply. For full
 proposals submitted via Grants.gov, see NSF Grants.gov Application
 Guide; A Guide for the Preparation and Submission of NSF
 Applications via Grants.gov (Note:  The NSF Grants.gov Application
 Guide is available on the Grants.gov website and on the NSF website
 at: http://www.nsf.gov/bfa/dias/policy/docs/grantsgovguide.pdf.)

 This Dear Colleague Letter is expected to be in effect from FY2009
 through FY2011.  Titles of proposals emphasizing Life in Transition
 (LiT) should be prefaced with "LiT:".  The review process will
 follow standard practices of the BIO program to which the proposal
 is submitted.  Investigators are strongly encouraged to contact the
 Life in Transition Working Group (bio-litwg@nsf.gov) to determine
 if their proposed ideas respond to the LiT goals, discuss relevant
 topics of interest, and gain advice on how best to prepare a
 proposal for this activity.  We look forward to discussing your
 ideas.

 Sincerely,

 James P. Collins
 Assistant Director for Biological Sciences
 National Science Foundation