Natural Prodcast Episode 18 – A CSP Primer

In this episode, I partnered with Menaka Wilhelm to talk to JGI staff about JGI’s Community Science Program, or CSP.

Important Links:

• The main page for information about CSPs
• JGI’s Data Release Policy
• A statement on DOE Mission relevance
• If you have general questions about the CSP, you should contact Christa Pennacchio in the Project Management Office
• If you have questions about project relevance or experimental protocols, contact Deputy for User Programs, Tanja Woyke, who you’ll hear in this episode.

Transcript

DAN UDWARY: It’s been a while, but Natural Prodcast is back again for another round of episodes. If you stick around for the next few months, you’re going to hear my last interview with my co-host Alison Takemura, who’s moved on from JGI to do real journalism, and we wish her all the best. Later on, I’ll introduce my new co-host, who I’m really excited to be working with, and I think you all will be too. But, today, I got the chance to work with my JGI colleague Menaka Wilhelm, who is the host of JGI’s other podcast, Genome Insider. If you’re a Genome Insider listener, then you’ll recognize this material, though my show is a little more free-form, and this is the longer cut of the discussions you may have hear over there, with a few more questions specific to secondary metabolites. I hope both versions are worth listening to!

If you’ve listened to this podcast before, and you listened to it all the way to the end, then you’ve probably heard me say that the Joint Genome Institute is a “Department of Energy user science facility”, and so today what you’re going to hear about are some more of the details around that. Specifically, we’re going to talk about JGI’s Community Science Program, or CSP, which is the main mechanism by which users work with our facility to do science. Since I started working for JGI, and especially since I started the podcast, I get lots of questions from scientists about whether and how they can work with the JGI, and, you know, I’m always really happy to talk to anybody about this, but hopefully I can answer a lot of those questions today. Mostly, I think it all comes to explaining what a CSP is, how you apply for and get one, and what happens once you do.

Before we start, I realized in listening back to this and editing it that we used a few acronyms that you all might not be as familiar with. We’re government. We love acronyms, what are you going to do. So, you probably know that “DOE” is the United States Department of Energy, which is a federal agency that does all kids of things around nuclear security, energy production, and scientific research, especially at US National Labs, like Lawrence Berkeley Lab (that’s LBL), the National Lab where JGI is located. And within the DOE is BER, which stands for Biological and Environmental Research, which is a program that funds JGI and most of the other biological research facilities at all the National Labs. BER also provides us guidance on what kinds of research to support and conduct. I already told you what a CSP is, but one other program I think we mention is FICUS, which stands for “Facilities Integrating Collaborations for User Science.” This is kind of like a CSP, but you would be proposing a larger project that requires the work of two or more DOE user science facilities. That’s kind of out of the scope of this conversation, but check it out if you think that’s something you’re interested in. OK. I think that should cover most of the government acronyms. You’re on your own with the science ones.

So, anyway, if, after listening to this, you think you actually do have a great project that would awesome for a CSP, or if you’re a new investigator who wants to try out something smaller scale, or if you’re just curious to know more, then I really encourage you to head over to JGI’s website at jgi.doe.gov, and then click on the User Programs tab at the top. From there you’ll be able to find info about the CSP, FICUS, New Investigator and Functional Genomics calls. For my audience, all of these programs can and often do involve secondary metabolism. JGI’s mission is broadly focused on biological research to better understand energy and environment, and natural product molecules obviously play a huge role in ecology through cell-cell communication, chemical warfare, and symbiotic relationships.

If you think you have a big idea that fits within our mission, we’re happy to help you figure out if it’s a good fit. Everyone we talked to said “Contact us if you have questions” and you should! I’ll put contact links in the show notes, which you can always access through JGI’s webpage at naturalprodcast.com, along with transcripts and more information about all of the topics we cover.

OK. Long intro today. We’ll have two discussions. First up is Tanja Woyke, JGI’s Deputy of User Programs.

 

DAN UDWARY: All right. Well, when it was Alison, I just said, hey, Alison.

MENAKA WILHELM: Yeah.

DAN UDWARY: So, hey, Menaka!

MENAKA WILHELM: Hey, Dan!

DAN UDWARY: So, this is a podcast crossover?

MENAKA WILHELM: It is. Of Genome Insider.

DAN UDWARY: And Natural Prodcast.

MENAKA WILHELM: Yeah. So, we’re excited.

DAN UDWARY: I’m very excited. This is the first time we’ve recorded something together. So, this is fun.

MENAKA WILHELM: Yeah, it’s true.

DAN UDWARY: Yeah. So, I don’t know what your script is like, but you know I wanted to talk to you about CSPs.

MENAKA WILHELM: Yeah. The Community Science Program of the JGI.

DAN UDWARY: What do we want to tell our people about CSPs? I think for Natural Prodcast, I think the question that generally comes up that people come to me asking like is– there’s a little bit confusion about what a CSP is as opposed to other different kinds of federal grants like through NIH or NSF that people would maybe normally be applying for.

And then, my audience would have specific questions about secondary metabolism and how that might relate to CSPs or not. And so I don’t know. I thought it’d be fun for us to work together to talk about this kind of stuff and talk to a few people at JGI who can maybe give us some better answers.

MENAKA WILHELM: Yeah, definitely. And the Community Science Program is one of the main ways, I’d say, that other researchers work with the JGI. So, submitting proposals, and then working on projects through the CSP program, yeah, is a big part of what JGI does with collaborators. So, I think, yeah, I think it would be great to hear more from the people who work with CSP researchers and also who run the program.

DAN UDWARY: There we go. All right. So here’s what we talked to Tanja Woyke about.

DAN UDWARY: Good morning!

TANJA WOYKE: Morning. So, I have to admit, I did not have– which may be good, I did not have time to even look at these questions.

DAN UDWARY: Fine.

MENAKA WILHELM: No problem at all.

DAN UDWARY: You’ll sound more spontaneous!

MENAKA WILHELM: Yeah. Well, yeah, the first question is the easiest. It’s just what’s your name and what do you do at JGI.

TANJA WOYKE: My name is Tanja Woyke. I’m the Deputy Director for the user programs at the JGI, and I’m also the head of the microbial genome program. And I’m a scientist here. And have been for 18 years. (LAUGHS)

DAN UDWARY: All right. Easy start. What does CSP stand for?

TANJA WOYKE: Great question. CSP stands for Community Science program. It used to actually stand for Community Sequencing Program. Also CSP, same acronym. But as JGI, as a user facility, evolved, and as we started to do more than just sequencing, we thought the name community sequencing program is really not appropriate anymore. And so we changed it to a science program.

MENAKA WILHELM: How cool. And I think that’s a nice segue for the next thing we wanted to ask you about, which is basically so many projects at JGI start with sequencing, but where else did those sequences go? Like, what are the other scientific tools we offer people?

TANJA WOYKE: Yeah. Also a really good question. So we offer, in addition to sequencing, we offer metabolomics and also DNA synthesis. And we consider these capabilities a little bit more from sequence to function since we can start to tackle more functional questions. For example, we can synthesize a gene and then figure out what it might be doing through some sort of downstream functional assay.

MENAKA WILHELM: Are there any specific things you’d point to that researchers can do in a project at the JGI that they couldn’t elsewhere?

TANJA WOYKE: Yeah. I would say a lot of things. So we are not– we like to consider ourselves, not a core sequencing facility, and of course, sequencing facility you can just send your DNA and get some sequence back. We provide a lot more than that. The first one I would say is the complexity of the capabilities that we have and that you can request.

So you can request a mixture of, for example, metatranscriptome sequencing, metagenomics, single cell genomics. We even do the flow cytometry for that. Again, metabolomics, DNA synthesis. And then also the scale is pretty unique in that we don’t just sequence one microbe for you, we sequenced thousands for you or thousands metagenomes. And I think also the quality that we provide.

So for fungal and for a lot of our eukaryotic genomes, all our eukaryotic genomes. Fungal plant, algal genomes, a lot of effort goes into generating these data sets. There’s a lot of manual work in terms of the annotate, the assembly, the curation, QC, annotation of these data sets. For our eukaryotes, in addition to sequencing the genome, we always sequence RNA alongside. That really helps us to determine where genes start and end and really help improve our annotation.

So a lot of effort goes into these, I’m going to call them products for lack of a better term, but into these products that we offer that I think a poor facility would not be able to offer you. So there’s a lot of– we also have a lot of analysis pipelines, be it for, again, metagenome, metatranscriptomes for SNP analysis if somebody has a resequencing project.

For example, people do experiments where they involve a population in the lab under a certain stress or conditions, and then they see how does the genome change over time, if I constantly give it this kind of selection pressure really. And we have pipelines for that. So again, we don’t just give them the data output, but we tell them which genes may be affected by that and how.

So a lot of goes into that. And of course, we have tools also, and Dan knows very well about this, for a second day metabolite analysis, which is really great. It just provides, again, more than just a data output. It helps the collaborator to inoperate the data and pursue their science more efficiently.

DAN UDWARY: Yeah. I’m just going to make the point that secondary metabolism very interdisciplinary kind of field. And so having access to all the technologies that the JGI has can really benefit secondary metabolism projects, specifically for my audience. But, yeah. So, Tanja, what makes a research project a good fit for working with the JGI?

TANJA WOYKE: The very important first criteria–

DAN UDWARY: So here’s what we talked to Tanja Woyke about.

TANJA WOYKE: –meets the DOE emission criteria. So we are funded by DOE-BER and work within the DOE emission space of bioenergy, carbon cycling, biogeochemistry, bioproducts. So we cannot work on health related projects. We really need to fit– a project needs to fit under this umbrella.

Now this is still a pretty broad umbrella, I would say. So within that there are a lot of avenues that researchers can explore. Even within these broad areas, there are a few areas that are less of a focus, I would say. For example, marine research is not so much of a focus within BER anymore. We really focus on terrestrial ecosystems, but we work in coastal environments, brackish environments, et cetera.

Now in terms of what the capabilities that should be requested or can, yeah, should be requested– can be requested.

DAN UDWARY: Which is it? Is it should be? (LAUGHS)

TANJA WOYKE: Well, both. Both should be and can be and should be so far. Yeah. So let’s talk about it. So for our annual CSP call, we do like to get proposals that are really multifaceted, that do request a diversity of the different capabilities that we have, that really exploit these capabilities for the PIs research questions.

We don’t want to get a proposal that’s just asking for 20 microbial genomes. That is not a good fit for our annual CSP proposal call. Now we have smaller calls, the new investigator proposal call where smaller proposals may be a fit. Still not 20 many microbes. We still we work in plates, right? We’re a high throughput sequencing. We have high throughput sequencing capabilities. Such as sending us 20 DNA samples is also not a good fit for JGI, even for the new investigator CSP. We need to work in a certain scale. So there’s a minimum.

But again, somebody, a PI, should submit a fairly complex proposal. Ideally multi investigator. And generating, I think this is important too, generating data sets that don’t just benefit that one PI, but that have utility more broadly across a group of scientists, across the scientific community, that goes far beyond just a single investigator PI.

We would like our data to get used over and over again, looked at from different angles, different questions asked, and published over and over again. But again, with different research questions in mind. These data sets are– that’s what we want to generate. Just to have the largest impact in the broader research community really.

MENAKA WILHELM: Yeah, definitely.

DAN UDWARY: Awesome answer.

MENAKA WILHELM: Yeah. And who’s eligible to submit CSP proposals? We talked about PIs, but–

TANJA WOYKE: Yeah. Who’s eligible. So for most our calls, and I’m going to make the exception here for the new investigator CSP call, anybody is really eligible. You can be from any country. You can be in any career stage. Now if somebody is a grad student, it’s important to have submitted within the proposal package, information that shows that you can really execute on this project.

So if you’re a grad student, if you don’t have a track record yet, you need to build a team around this project, right? So you need to have expertise on the front end and back end. We want to make sure in our reviewers, all these proposals are going through scientific review. Reviewers are going to look really closely. Are they going to deliver? Do they have funding? And do they have the expertise to actually do the sampling that they propose? And go to these, sometimes, pretty elaborate places where you need sampling permits and significant budget to get these samples.

Do they have expertise and resources to extract the nucleic acids or collect the cell material and get that shipped to JGI? And then they look at the other end. Once JGI generates the data, do they have the resources and expertise to do the bioinformatics and to synthesize these results into publication? So there’s this really important because we don’t want the data to just sit there or we don’t want to start a proposal, and then we can’t get the samples.

And so that said, a lot of the proposals, specifically for the annual CSP and for the FICUS call, have research teams that are larger. They have a broad expertise, and often they team up with others, right? If the research lab is focused on geochemistry and it’s really strong, has been working on the sampling site for a while, but they may have not done much bioinformatics or they don’t have a track record, they haven’t published much in bioinformatics, they team up with somebody who can do that. And then the team together makes a really strong proposal and a strong research team that has a high chance of success.

DAN UDWARY: How do I phrase this? Sorry. [LAUGHTER] I want to ask about to what extent there would be overlap in collaboration with, say, JGI staff, and how much of that should be considered in a proposal?

TANJA WOYKE: So I think it depends on the bandwidth of the staff at the time that the data analysis is needed. So we do collaborate with various PIs quite closely on their CSPs. But we can’t collaborate with every CSP or FICUS user because we don’t have the bandwidth for that. So I would say, usually, if we get requests for help, we try to help. I know it also depends on the product and what’s being generated for our eukaryotic genomes, the fungal, algal, and plant programs.

And JGI staff and HudsonAlpha staff are a lot more hands on. I mean, they have this expertise in this field. And they really work very closely with the users to make sure that they generate quality data, and that it gets analyzed. And in a way that helps the PI, I think. For metagenomes and microbial genomes, in part because of the scale of how much we generate for these kind of products, it really depends on the PI.

And nowadays, a lot of PIs are very good. They have very good bioinformatics skills to just take a bunch of metagenomes and isolate genomes or single cell genomes, and analyze them without much help from JGI. So I would say, for these products, it depends.

DAN UDWARY: Right. And I can speak to secondary metabolism in that. I know that our group has quite a bit of interaction, probably mostly because there aren’t too many CSPs focused on secondary metabolism yet, because we’re at a very new science program. But, yeah, I can promise lots of interaction if secondary metabolism proposals go through, for sure.

TANJA WOYKE: Yeah. And the beauty about that secondary metabolism, I find, is that even though it may not be the original intent in the proposal depending on what sample you’re going to sequence and what comes out of it, if you start looking at biosynthetic gene clusters, you may find a wealth and some really interesting results in the data. And it may be, I’m going to call it an afterthought, but there could be some really interesting research in secondary metabolites coming out without it even being the original intent of the proposal.

DAN UDWARY: Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So I guess, we should talk about the proposal and submission process. And I don’t have a specific question on that, but maybe you’d want to give a really high level overview of what that looks like?

TANJA WOYKE: Yeah. So we have on our website the link on where to submit your proposal, click this button, and that’s a start point. And also on the website, we have a lot of good information on each call, what are the deadlines for our large call. We have letters of intent. So there’s a letter of intent deadline. And for our small– and then, once the letters of intents are accepted, you get time to write the full proposal.

For our smaller calls, for the CSP functional genomics call and the CSP new investigator call, we don’t have letters of intents because they’re generally smaller proposal. They’re not as involved, I would say. And each call gets updated constantly. In fact, we’re just rewriting the language for the annual CSP call. That call is supposed to come out in early next year. Same for the FICUS, we’re working with EMSL and DOE very closely to update some of these, we call them special emphasis, or scientific focus areas that we have for these calls.

And these get updated regularly depending on the directions that BER is taking. Also in line with JGI’s strategic directions. These change once in a while. So I encourage PIs that plan to submit a proposal to really carefully read through these details. Also the capabilities that we offer get updated on a regular basis as some of the more boutique, I’m going to call them, boutique capabilities become more mainstream and get offered as main products at a larger scale.

So that’s the first thing. And then, yeah, really start clicking the Submit here button. And that brings you to a little interface where you can start filling in the details, the title, the PIs, the teams. Definitely upload the CVs of all the team members for the reviewers, scientific reviewers. Look very closely at the material that’s being submitted. And they really they’re asked by us to just review these proposals based on what’s uploaded, right? Don’t read between the lines.

So if key PI is not uploading their CV, that information cannot be included in the review process. So it’s really important to submit everything most completely. And then, there’s different sections that describe the work. In general. Scientific merit and why it’s important. The DOE mission is one of these sections. A very important section. We want to be sure that the PIs can articulate why their work falls within one of these DOE mission areas. And that’s a really important one.

And then also, we talked about this a little bit earlier. The utility of the data, right? As I mentioned earlier, we want to make sure that this data set is not just one data set that serves the PI, and PI writes one paper and that’s it, and then the data set is really not that useful anymore. We want to generate data sets that have broad utility and broad interest of the research community. And we want the PI to articulate that as well. We want them to write out why they think the data that we would generate for them is interesting to the broader research community.

MENAKA WILHELM: Yeah. That makes sense. And then, if we fast forward to the end of a successful project, can you talk a little bit about the data release policy?

TANJA WOYKE: Yeah, absolutely. So we do have a new, or I’m going to call it “newer” data release policy, and that policy essentially states that we provide a one year embargo to sequencing data and metabolomics data. That means that as soon as the project is completed, and by completion, we define completion as all the analysis tasks being done and the data being released.

For example, for microbial genome that means an annotated genome that’s integrated into our integrated microbial genomes system, which is our comparative analysis system. Once that is completed, the clock starts to tick. And then for one year only the PI, and whoever the PI, all the core PI’s collaborators or anybody else who the PI wants access to it has access to that data. But otherwise, it’s hidden. Nobody sees it. Nobody knows it exists really.

And then, once that one year is over, the data gets released on our portals, such as IMGM. But we also then push the data to GenBank. So the raw data goes to GenBank, as well as the assembly, the annotations, et cetera, depending on the product. We push different types of data sets to GenBank and CPI.

MENAKA WILHELM: Is there anything else that you want potential users to know?

TANJA WOYKE: Yeah. I think one thing I want users to know is that if they have questions, please come talk to us. We’re there for you. We are a user facility. We’re very user oriented, and we want to help enable your science. So if you have questions, be it about the DOE mission – is my project DOE mission relevant?  Please come talk to us. There’s information on the website. I’m always available. If there are technical questions on the proposal submission or if something is unclear, contact us. We’re super happy setting up a quick Zoom call, hop on the call with you, and discuss your project and help you.

And also, down the road, if you are a user and there are questions, we’re always here. Usually, each project has [been] assigned a project manager, who shepherds the projects through. And they are there for the users, for you, to help you.

DAN UDWARY: And here’s Miranda Harmon-Smith.

MENAKA WILHELM: Well, just the first question for you, Miranda, is if you could tell us your name and what you do for the JGI?

MIRANDA HARMON-SMITH: Sure. So my name is Miranda Harmon-Smith. And I’m a project manager at the JGI. I mainly focus on synthesis proposals, but I also work on sequencing proposals as well. I’ve been at the JGI for 20 years, and 10 of those years, I’ve been a project manager.

MENAKA WILHELM: And in your experience, what makes a project a good fit for working with JGI?

MIRANDA HARMON-SMITH: (SNORTS) Well, so when the reviewers– so we have a scientific review of the proposals. That’s what happens right after the submission. And so there’s specific areas that they’re assessing, which scientific merit is key. Is it relevant to the DOE’s mission?

MENAKA WILHELM: What kinds of projects are unlikely to get approved for JGI support?

MIRANDA HARMON-SMITH: Sure. Well, if you’re asking for anything related to human health, that’s out. (CHUCKLES) So we don’t do anything related to human health or creating vaccines, human gut microbiomes. We don’t do things related to human health.

In my experience, most proposals that are submitted are genuinely relevant. It’s just if they’re just far outside of the DOE mission or they can’t make that connection to carbon cycling or whatever it is. Other things would be like poor grantsmanship. A lot of people, the writing just isn’t clear. It’s not obvious what their scientific goal is. Maybe they haven’t shown data that previous experiments have been successful.

MENAKA WILHELM: When you speak to potential users, like when you set up a call, what are the most common questions that you get? Like, what are the things that you wish more people would just know right off the bat?

MIRANDA HARMON-SMITH: So a lot of them don’t realize that we’re actually going to clone their constructs into a vector and the total amount that they can request. So the minimum request is 100 kb. The maximum request is 500 kb.

DAN UDWARY: For DNA synthesis.

MIRANDA HARMON-SMITH: For DNA synthesis. Sorry. For the functional genomics call, you can request RNA sequencing. And so that has different requirements.

And I think sometimes, they think requesting less is better. And that’s not necessarily the case. You’re not going to have a greater chance of getting approved because you requested only 100 kb versus 500 kb. In the lab, they’re going to do the whole set at one time. So it’s better to have really more, to request more allocation than less.

Also, they ask if they can do the project in phases, which is absolutely a possibility. So if they want to just do a small pilot project of 100 kb, sometimes we allow less than that. You can do maybe down to 50 kb for a pilot project. And then submit the final request as a second phase. Yeah. And also, asking about if it’s relevant to the DOE mission. Does it fit into to the mission.

Sometimes, we have projects that are algal related or that are marine related, and so we can do some projects that are freshwater and coastal. But we’ve kind of shied away from the ocean. Microbes. We’ve done those in the past, but the DOE mission changes over time. Yeah. We don’t often get a lot of calls. So that’s why I encourage users to reach out to us because we can offer advice, and we can answer their questions that they have so that they can have a successfully accepted proposal.

MENAKA WILHELM: Yeah. That makes sense.

DAN UDWARY: So your project gets accepted. When does the work on a project begin?

MIRANDA HARMON-SMITH: Great. So as soon as the proposal has been accepted, and you’ve been notified, we work with you to set up an initiation call. During the initiation call, you’re going to meet with the program leads. You’re going to meet with the project manager.

So depending on what capabilities you’ve asked for, you might have multiple project managers because we specialize in different areas. There’s a separate project manager for metabolomics, a separate fungal project manager, et cetera. And we invite the submitting PI, any of the collaborators or co-PIs are welcome to join that call.

And so that’s really the time when we’re going to develop the statement of work, which is really just defining the entire project scope from beginning to end. So, we’ll talk about project requirements, expectations on the users end, on the JGI’s end, an overall plan of action, the type of deliverables, the timeline and schedule, communication plan. And then, what closing out the project looks like.

But a lot of this is an iterative process. So, we’ll be back and forth communicating after the initiation call. But throughout the whole lifecycle of the proposal, it’s a very collaborative process where we’re in constant communication to let them know what stage the project is at or answer any questions that they have.

DAN UDWARY: Maybe this is a more scientific question or maybe a little more secondary metabolism focused. But is there a size limitation on how big a piece of DNA we can sequence or synthesize rather?

MIRANDA HARMON-SMITH: So that’s a good question, right? So, the product offerings that we have are we can do less than 5 kb genes. The timeline for those are about 90 days. So once we order it, it goes through our process and we’ll have it off to you within 90 days. Three months. We offer 5 to 10 kb size synthesis. We offer greater than 10 kb. We’ve done up to 100 kb in size. So that’s available. And it basically adds on like a month to the cycle time as you go up in size.

DAN UDWARY: Sure.

MIRANDA HARMON-SMITH: The users, when they publish–

DAN UDWARY: That’s the next question.

MIRANDA HARMON-SMITH: (LAUGHS) Yeah. We do expect that or hope that a publication comes out of the work that’s done at the JGI. You’re not necessarily required to acknowledge the individuals at the JGI who worked on your project, but you can. And we can provide the name of those individuals. Also, if you need a “Materials and Methods” section, we can provide that information as well.

We do require that you include the DOE Auspice Statement in any publications. And that can be found on our website as well. It’s also included in the initiation call statement of work that we produce. Within that each proposal is given a unique DOI, so we ask that the DOI is included in that statement, so that we can track down those publications easier.

MENAKA WILHELM: If someone is wrapping up a CSP proposal, but interested in doing more work with the JGI, can they submit another proposal while they’re still involved in an existing CSP project?

MIRANDA HARMON-SMITH: Oh, yeah, absolutely. And I think we have a lot of repeat users, and we welcome that. If you have a proposal that was just approved, and you have another idea for a second proposal, and you want to submit that during the next cycle, that’s fine, too.

MENAKA WILHELM: So don’t hold back.

MIRANDA HARMON-SMITH: Yeah. No. Absolutely. I think there’s even been times when the same PI submitted two separate proposals in one call. So, they had two different ideas.

DAN UDWARY: Did it work?

MIRANDA HARMON-SMITH: They submitted both of them. (LAUGHS) I don’t remember.

• A CSP is not a grant – it’s asking JGI to generate data
  • That data can come from DNA sequencing, metabolomics, DNA synthesis, data analysis, or whatever other capabilities the JGI can offer.
  • An ideal CSP is ideally going to make use of several of those capabilities I just mentioned.
  • And it’s important that the data generation should be at the right scale – today that usually means hundreds of genomes sequenced, or whatever the  equivalent is for more complex organisms, or hundreds of kb synthesized, and so on

• The project must fit within the DOE’s mission – that involves Energy and the Environment (not medicine or human health or higher animals, for the most part)
  • That also means that some environments or systems are more appropriate than others.
  • We heard, for example, that the marine env is specifically not of general interest to DOE or BER at the moment, unless you can make a really good case why it should be!

• The project should ideally end up with a dataset of broad utility to the scientific community, not just your own research
  • All of the data we generate at the JGI eventually becomes public, and our goal is to maximize the value of what we do to the scientific community at large. So, definitely consider the larger value of the data set that would be produced.
  • Check out the JGI’s data policy if that might be a problem for you. I’ll link to it in the show notes.

• Anyone, anywhere is eligible! Nationality doesn’t matter.
  • Generally established academics or teams of them are who get the most awards, but we work with industry and international institutions, too. You do not need to be a US citizen or resident to get a CSP.

• One more time: Everyone we talked to said to contact us if you have questions or just want help figuring out if working with JGI is a good fit for your research! So please do! If you have questions about appropriateness of projects or experimental design, you’re invited to contact Tanja directly, or for general questions contact Christa Pennacchio in the Project Management Office. You can find their emails on the CSP page, and I’ll link them in the show notes, which I’ll say one more time that you can always find at naturalprodcast.com