On H.R. 1: Proposed Elimination of Biological Research Funding (BER)

[BadgerKid]

at DOE.

Nothing new here -- science is being looked at for budget cuts.

This is a not overly technical email from the Biophysical Society pertaining to the McClintock Amendments and what's at stake this time around. There must be something the GOP collectively likes besides "teh embryos," Big Oil, and $$$.

BPS Legislative Action Alert: Urge House Members to Oppose Elimination of Biological Research Funding at DOE
February 17, 2011

BPS members are urged to reach out to House Members and urge them to oppose the McClintock (R-CA) Amendments (#304 and #305), which would essentially eliminate funding for the Biological and Environmental Research (BER) program in the DOE Office of Science and the research and facilities it supports at national laboratories and universities. The amendment would target the DOE funding many Biophysical Society members rely on to conduct their research.

To find your Congressman's contact information, go to http://www.house.gov/and enter your zip code in the box in the upper right hand corner. This will take you to your Congressman's website where you can find the phone number and an email form.

ABOUT BER:
BER's mission is to advance world-class biological and environmental research programs and scientific user facilities to support DOE's
energy, environment, and basic research missions. Mission priorities:

* Develop biofuels as a major secure national energy resource

* Understand relationships between climate change and Earth's ecosystems, and assess options for carbon sequestration

* Predict fate and transport of subsurface contaminants

* Develop new tools to explore the interface of biological and physical sciences



BER is already disproportionately cut in H.R. 1, the bill to fund the government for the rest of 2011:

In addition to cutting the DOE Office of Science by $886 million from its FY10 funding level, the bill as proposed by House Republicans last
Friday also caps funding for the Biological and Environmental Research (BER) program at $302 M, or about half the $604 M appropriated for BER
in FY10. As a result, approximately $302 M of the $886 million cut from FY10 funding levels for the Office of Science must come out of BER, and
by halving the BER budget approximately 6-months into the fiscal year, this effectively guts the program.


THE McCLINTOCK AMENDMENTS (#304 and #305) TO H.R.1

The McClintock Amendment would eliminate funding for BER altogether and the research and facilities it supports at national laboratories and
universities. We expect McClintock to argue that BER supports climate change research and therefore should be eliminated. However, by capping the budget of BER, it could be argued that the bill already cuts more than climate science research. Only half the budget of BER funds climate and atmospheric research, while the other half funds biological research addressing the fundamental challenges to the development and production of bioenergy, bio-based chemicals, and new tools for bioremediation. So whether the bill ultimately cuts the program in half or terminates it altogether halfway through the fiscal year, important research related to bioenergy and bio-based chemicals, the bioremediation of contaminated soil and water, and research to improve our understanding of the climate system will be dramatically impacted or cease altogether.



IMPACTS OF THE McCLINTOCK AMENDMENTS:

* Terminate approximately $184 M in university-based fundamental research and technology development on genome-based systems biology involving plant and microbial systems for bioenergy, carbon cycling, and environmental biogeochemistry as well as basic climate research in the areas of cloud and aerosol science, climate modeling, and soil and terrestrial ecosystem science.

* Terminate basic research related to the development of cellulosic ethanol and other biofuels by terminating DOE's 3 Bioenergy
Research Centers: BioEnergy Science Center (BESC) at Oak Ridge National Lab, the Join BioEnergy Institute (JBEI) at Lawrence Berkeley National Lab, and the Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center (GLBRC) at the University of Wisconsin, which in the first three years of operation
have collectively produced 66 inventions in various stages of the patent process, from disclosure to formal patent application, and over 400
peer-reviewed publications.

* Shutter the Environmental Molecular Sciences Laboratory (EMSL)
at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, mothballing unique experimental and computational capabilities, and displacing over 700
users from 35 states and around the world who study molecular science in support of DOE environmental remediation and energy research programs. The proposed cut to BER would eliminate biological research related to biomarkers for disease and cancer, the study of site remediation, nuclear materials, and radiation effects, and all associated research projects on radiation effects in materials.

* Mothball unique scientific instrumentation at the Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) research facility, and cease operation of
three fixed and two mobile sites that collect invaluable data on atmospheric radiation for use in climate change science that is shared
with over 1300 researchers world-wide seeking to reduce the uncertainty in climate change assessments and improve our understanding of the
climate system.

* Shutter the Joint Genome Institute at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (and operated in partnership with ORNL, PPPL, LLNL,
and LANL), the only facility in the world dedicated to non-health related genomic sequencing for energy and other research disciplines,
whose 2000 users survey the biosphere to characterize organisms relevant to the DOE science mission areas of bioenergy, global carbon cycling, and biogeochemistry, and which is enormously productive in generating DNA sequence data (in FY10 alone, over five trillion nucleotides).



BACKGROUND:

1. BioEnergy Research Centers

For instance, eliminating funding for BER would terminate the work at DOE's 3 Bioenergy Research Centers: BioEnergy Science Center (BESC) at Oak Ridge National Lab, the Join BioEnergy Institute (JBEI) at Lawrence Berkeley National Lab, and the Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center (GLBRC) at the University of Wisconsin.


In the first three years of operations, the BRCs together had 66 inventions in various stages of the patent process, from disclosure to
formal patent application, and over 400 peer-reviewed publications.

* BESC has developed new strains of ethanol-producing microbes with enhanced tolerance to stresses associated with industrial biofuels
production.

* JBEI is using synthetic biology toolkit to construct the first microbes to produce an advanced biofuel (biodiesel) directly from
biomass.

* GLBRC has characterized impacts of biomass crop agriculture on marginal lands, studying shifts in microbial community and potential for
changes in greenhouse gas emissions.


Each of these centers has numerous institutional partners whose work would be impacted as well, the list of which can be found here:

http://www.science.doe.gov/News_Information/News_Room/2007/Bioenergy_Research_Centers/DOE%20BRC%20fact%20sheet%20final%206-26-07.pdf



More general information about the DOE Bioenergy Research Centers can be
found here:

http://www.science.doe.gov/News_Information/News_Room/2007/Bioenergy_Research_Centers/index.htm

2. BER User Facilities

Environmental Molecular Sciences Laboratory (EMSL)

Eliminating funding for BER would shutter the Environmental Molecular Sciences Laboratory (EMSL) at PNNL, mothballing unique experimental and
computational capabilities, and displacing over 700 users from 35 states and around the world who study molecular science in support of DOE
environmental remediation and energy research programs. The proposed cut to BER would eliminate biological research related to biomarkers for
disease and cancer, the study of site remediation, nuclear materials, and radiation effects, and all associated research projects on radiation
effects in materials.

Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM)

Eliminating funding for the BER program would terminate the operation of three fixed and two mobile sites that collect invaluable data on
atmospheric radiation for use in climate change science. This data supports over 1300 researchers world-wide. The proposed cuts would:

* Eliminate ARM field campaigns that collect data used to reduce the uncertainty in climate change assessments. This data is essential
to improving our understanding of the climate system.

* Mothball unique scientific instrumentation.



Joint Genome Institute

JGI is a DOE BER national user facility with more than 2,000 users worldwide. The vast majority of JGI world is surveying the biosphere to
characterize organisms relevant to the DOE science mission areas of bioenergy, global carbon cycling, and biogeochemistry. The DOE JGI's
largest customers are the DOE Bioenergy Research Centers (BRCs), which were launched in 2007 to accelerate basic research in the development of
next generation cellulosic biofuels. It is the only facility in the world dedicated to non-health related genomic sequencing for energy and
other research disciplines.

The DOE JGI is enormously productive, not only in terms of generation of DNA sequence data (in FY10 alone, over five trillion nucleotides) but
also with respect to generating high-profile publications. Since 2004, the DOE JGI has played a role and shared co-authorship in a total of
several hundred peer-reviewed publications and played a significant role in several dozen papers in the journals Science and Nature between 2006
and the present. All of these papers have one or more DOE JGI authors and for the majority of them the DOE JGI played a leadership role in the
study, reflected in first or senior authorship.



TEXT OF AMENDMENT:

Sec. 4002. None of the funds provided by this Act under the heading ``Department of Energy, Science'' shall be available for biological and
environmental research authorized under subtitle G of title IX of the Energy Policy Act of 2005 (42 U.S.C. 16311 et seq.).

[eppur_se_muova]

1. It's biologists' fault for "pushing" evolution. nt

:sarcasm: