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, a joint initiative of the MBL, the University of Chicago, and Argonne National Laboratory, has announced the successful applicants for its inaugural . The focus of these ~$20K grants is to provide seed monies for microbial research projects that will help investigators generate the data needed for larger funding proposals. Another main aim is to incentivize collaborative projects between the center's three constitutive institutions. The winning proposals are:

• "Establishment of the Microbiome of the Little Skate During Embryogenesis" - David Mark Welch (MBL) and Neil Shubin (UChicago)
• "Nitrogen Fixation in Coastal Marine Environments: Discovering Microbial Function" - Cathy Pfister (UChicago), Murat Eren (UChicago) and Anne Giblin (MBL)
• "Dissecting Phage-Bacteria Interactions in Single Cells" - Maureen Coleman (UChicago) and Anindita Basu (ANL)
• "Bone Marrow Reconstitution of Germ-Free Mice to Determine the Role of Microbiota I B-catenin Induced Gut Inflammation" - Fotini Gounari and Thomas Gajewski (UChicago)
• "A Novel Approach to Understanding Sino nasal Microbes and Mucosal Immunity in Chronic Rhinosinusitis" - Jay Pinto, Anne Sperling and Philip Verhoef (UChicago)
• "Identifying the Role of the Segmented Earthworm Microbiome in Whole Body Regeneration" - Duygu Özpolat (MBL), Jessica Mark Welch (MBL) and Murat Eren (UChicago)

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