Workshop on “Life Cycle of the Elements: rocks, soils, organisms, environment”

This online workshop will gather experts in diverse areas of biology and environmental sciences to discuss the “life cycle of elements” moving through the environment and into organisms. Topics to be considered during the workshop span the fields of soil sciences, environmental sciences and mining; plant sciences, plant engineering and agriculture; and fundamental processes of micronutrient uptake, transport, and function in living tissues and cells.

The workshop consists of four sessions: (1) Geological/geochemical impacts on environment; (2) Soil-microbe-plant interfaces; (3) Use of elements by cells (fundamental mechanisms; uptake, transport, storage, function); and (4) Impact of environment on living organisms. A major product of this workshop will be a peer-reviewed, published report defining forefront research questions surrounding how chemical elements move through ecosystems, from interfaces between soils and living cells, to how elements are taken up, transported, used, and stored by living tissues and cells.

Defining these questions will clarify which areas would most benefit from cutting-edge x-ray techniques and complementary imaging tools. The workshop will engage students and postdoctoral researchers through poster contributions and an “idea slam,” where speakers have one slide and 1-2 minutes to describe an important research question that they cannot address today.

This workshop is a follow on to the CHESS X-LEAP initiative workshop in June 2020. X-LEAP stands for X-ray imaging for Life sciences, Earth sciences, Agriculture, and Plant sciences.

Elemental distributions in the environment and in living organisms are fundamentally intertwined. The subsurface composition of the earth, through both natural geology and human impact, strongly influences the elemental content in the surrounding waterways, soils, plants, and animals. The workshop will define leading-edge questions related to elemental processes, especially metals, at the complex interfaces between soils, microbiomes, and plants, including elemental cycling in the environment and fundamental mechanisms of elemental uptake, transport, storage, and function in living tissues and cells.

Understanding quantitative elemental distributions at different length scales in these complex, chemically heterogeneous systems, including living tissues, is essential to understanding the fundamental processes underpinning elemental transport on environmental scales (mm to m) down to cellular and even subcellular levels (<1 µm). Frequently it is critical to determine not only the elemental distribution but also the chemical state (i.e. metal oxidation states and/or bonding environment), ideally with minimal sample preparation or even in vivo, at relevant time scales for dynamically changing systems. The workshop will also seek to clarify the experimental capabilities needed to advance understanding of the questions it defines.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.