Assembling the Tree of Life | Apply Online

Opportunity Summary:

The National Science Foundation (NSF) grant opportunity titled "Assembling the Tree of Life" focuses on building a much more complete, large-scale evolutionary framework that connects the major lineages of life across Earths history. The program is motivated by the fact that modern biology is generating huge volumes of new data, including whole genome sequences, fine-grained structural biology, expanding inventories of biodiversity, and growing recognition that processes like lateral (horizontal) gene transfer can blur simple ancestry patterns. When these newer data streams are combined with long-standing comparative evidence from morphology, fossils, development, behavior, and ecological interactions, the need for a clear organizing backbone becomes more urgent. NSF frames phylogeny, the evolutionary family tree of organisms, as that backbone because it helps researchers retrieve biological information, make predictions about traits and functions, and analyze patterns in a way that is grounded in evolutionary history.

The central goal of the opportunity is to move beyond the limits of the typical single-investigator or small-team study that targets a narrow taxonomic group. Instead, NSF is aiming for coordinated efforts that can resolve evolutionary relationships across large groups of organisms and, over time, help assemble a framework "Tree of Life" spanning all major branches. Because that kind of synthesis is too large for isolated projects, the solicitation explicitly anticipates larger collaborations that work across institutions and disciplines, bringing together expertise in organismal biology, genomics, paleontology, systematics, computational biology, and related areas. In practical terms, the program is looking for creative and innovative research that can settle difficult phylogenetic questions at broad scales, where existing evidence may be incomplete, conflicting, or computationally challenging to integrate.

In addition to supporting biological discovery about relationships among organisms, the program also emphasizes enabling work in computational phylogenetics and phyloinformatics. This includes projects that generate or assemble key datasets (data acquisition), develop and apply analytical approaches for inferring evolutionary trees (data analysis), create improved computational methods (algorithm development), and promote broader use of tools and results (dissemination). The inclusion of algorithm development and dissemination signals that NSF is not only interested in producing new trees, but also in strengthening the infrastructure and methods needed to build, test, update, and share phylogenetic knowledge as data grow. Given the mention of lateral gene transfer, the scope implicitly includes addressing complex evolutionary signals that may not fit simple branching patterns, which often requires more sophisticated models, careful data handling, and scalable computation.

Administratively, this is a discretionary NSF grant program within the Science and Technology and other Research and Development activity category, listed under CFDA 47.074 (Biological Sciences). The opportunity does not require cost sharing or matching. The estimated total funding is $12,000,000, with an expectation of about 6 awards, indicating a relatively competitive program that likely favors ambitious, high-impact projects with broad relevance. Eligibility is described as unrestricted, meaning it is broadly open to different types of applicant organizations, subject to any clarifications in the full solicitation text. Key dates in the provided record include an original closing date of March 22, 2010, a pattern of deadlines on the fourth Monday in March annually thereafter, and a listed current closing date of March 26, 2012. The funding opportunity number is 10-513, and additional details are referenced in NSF Publication 10-513.

For applicants trying to access the full announcement or experiencing technical issues, the notice points to NSF grants.gov support via grantsgovsupport@nsf.gov. Overall, the opportunity is designed to accelerate progress toward a comprehensive evolutionary map of life by funding both the biological research needed to resolve major relationships and the computational and informatics innovations required to manage, analyze, and share the rapidly expanding body of evolutionary data.

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