skip to main content
US FlagAn official website of the United States government
dot gov icon
Official websites use .gov
A .gov website belongs to an official government organization in the United States.
https lock icon
Secure .gov websites use HTTPS
A lock ( lock ) or https:// means you've safely connected to the .gov website. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites.

Explore Research Products in the PAR
It may take a few hours for recently added research products to appear in PAR search results.


This content will become publicly available on March 18, 2026

Title: A Vision for Continental-Scale Biology: Research Across Multiple Scales
Not AvailableOur planet is facing many complex environmental challenges, including the loss of biodiversity and rapidly changing climate conditions, driven by intensifying human-nature interactions worldwide. Dramatic advances in the biological sciences over recent years are made possible by new tools to study life at many scales, from identifying mutations in a single gene to monitoring changes in plants, animals, and microbes over an entire continent. These tools have the potential to usher in a new era of continental-scale biology (CSB) in which researchers can combine data from various realms across organizational, spatial, and temporal scales, addressing questions on biological processes and patterns that cannot be answered by observations at either small or large scales alone. This report, prepared at the request of the National Science Foundation, sets out a vision for the development of CSB and identifies the research areas that could most benefit from multi-scale approaches. Advancing the use of CSB to address a wide range of biological and societal challenges will require the development of integrated conceptual frameworks and theories to guide research, deployment of emerging technologies, and development of a skilled workforce to synthesize the vast amounts of data from various sources.  more » « less
Award ID(s):
2113842
PAR ID:
10659352
Author(s) / Creator(s):
Corporate Creator(s):
Publisher / Repository:
National Academies Press
Date Published:
ISBN:
0-309-71135-5
Format(s):
Medium: X
Sponsoring Org:
National Science Foundation
More Like this
  1. ; ; ; ; ; (, Integrative and Comparative Biology)
    null (Ed.)
    Abstract Despite efforts to integrate research across different subdisciplines of biology, the scale of integration remains limited. We hypothesize that future generations of Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies specifically adapted for biological sciences will help enable the reintegration of biology. AI technologies will allow us not only to collect, connect and analyze data at unprecedented scales, but also to build comprehensive predictive models that span various subdisciplines. They will make possible both targeted (testing specific hypotheses) and untargeted discoveries. AI for biology will be the cross-cutting technology that will enhance our ability to do biological research at every scale. We expect AI to revolutionize biology in the 21st century much like statistics transformed biology in the 20th century. The difficulties, however, are many, including data curation and assembly, development of new science in the form of theories that connect the subdisciplines, and new predictive and interpretable AI models that are more suited to biology than existing machine learning and AI techniques. Development efforts will require strong collaborations between biological and computational scientists. This white paper provides a vision for AI for Biology and highlights some challenges. 
    more » « less
  2. ; ; ; ; ; ; ; (, Environmental Research Letters)
    Abstract Meeting the United Nation’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) calls for an integrative scientific approach, combining expertise, data, models and tools across many disciplines towards addressing sustainability challenges at various spatial and temporal scales. This holistic approach, while necessary, exacerbates the big data and computational challenges already faced by researchers. Many challenges in sustainability research can be tackled by harnessing the power of advanced cyberinfrastructure (CI). The objective of this paper is to highlight the key components and technologies of CI necessary for meeting the data and computational needs of the SDG research community. An overview of the CI ecosystem in the United States is provided with a specific focus on the investments made by academic institutions, government agencies and industry at national, regional, and local levels. Despite these investments, this paper identifies barriers to the adoption of CI in sustainability research that include, but are not limited to access to support structures; recruitment, retention and nurturing of an agile workforce; and lack of local infrastructure. Relevant CI components such as data, software, computational resources, and human-centered advances are discussed to explore how to resolve the barriers. The paper highlights multiple challenges in pursuing SDGs based on the outcomes of several expert meetings. These include multi-scale integration of data and domain-specific models, availability and usability of data, uncertainty quantification, mismatch between spatiotemporal scales at which decisions are made and the information generated from scientific analysis, and scientific reproducibility. We discuss ongoing and future research for bridging CI and SDGs to address these challenges. 
    more » « less
  3. ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; ; et al (, Nature Biotechnology)
    Single-cell genomics has enabled the study of biological processes at an unprecedented scale and resolution. These studies were enabled by innovative data generation technologies coupled with emerging computational tools specialized for single-cell data. As single-cell technologies have become more prevalent, so has the development of new analysis tools, which has resulted in over 1,700 published algorithms1 (as of February 2024). Thus, there is an increasing need to continually evaluate which algorithm performs best in which context to inform best practices2,3 that evolve with the field. In many fields of quantitative science, public competitions and benchmarks address this need by evaluating state-of-the-art methods against known criteria, following the concept of a common task framework4. Here, we present Open Problems, a living, extensive, community-guided platform including 12 current single-cell tasks that we envisage raising standards for the selection, evaluation and development of methods in single-cell analysis. 
    more » « less
  4. ; ; ; ; (, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences)
    During metamorphosis, the wings of a butterfly sprout hundreds of thousands of scales with intricate microstructures and nano-structures that determine the wings’ optical appearance, wetting characteristics, thermodynamic properties, and aerodynamic behavior. Although the functional characteristics of scales are well known and prove desirable in various applications, the dynamic processes and temporal coordination required to sculpt the scales’ many structural features remain poorly understood. Current knowledge of scale growth is primarily gained from ex vivo studies of fixed scale cells at discrete time points; to fully understand scale formation, it is critical to characterize the time-dependent morphological changes throughout their development. Here, we report the continuous, in vivo, label-free imaging of growing scale cells of Vanessa cardui using speckle-correlation reflection phase microscopy. By capturing time-resolved volumetric tissue data together with nanoscale surface height information, we establish a morphological timeline of wing scale formation and gain quantitative insights into the underlying processes involved in scale cell patterning and growth. We identify early differences in the patterning of cover and ground scales on the young wing and quantify geometrical parameters of growing scale features, which suggest that surface growth is critical to structure formation. Our quantitative, time-resolved in vivo imaging of butterfly scale development provides the foundation for decoding the processes and biomechanical principles involved in the formation of functional structures in biological materials. 
    more » « less
  5. ; ; ; ; ; (, Integrative and Comparative Biology)
    Synopsis Mechanistically connecting genotypes to phenotypes is a longstanding and central mission of biology. Deciphering these connections will unite questions and datasets across all scales from molecules to ecosystems. Although high-throughput sequencing has provided a rich platform on which to launch this effort, tools for deciphering mechanisms further along the genome to phenome pipeline remain limited. Machine learning approaches and other emerging computational tools hold the promise of augmenting human efforts to overcome these obstacles. This vision paper is the result of a Reintegrating Biology Workshop, bringing together the perspectives of integrative and comparative biologists to survey challenges and opportunities in cracking the genotype to phenotype code and thereby generating predictive frameworks across biological scales. Key recommendations include promoting the development of minimum “best practices” for the experimental design and collection of data; fostering sustained and long-term data repositories; promoting programs that recruit, train, and retain a diversity of talent; and providing funding to effectively support these highly cross-disciplinary efforts. We follow this discussion by highlighting a few specific transformative research opportunities that will be advanced by these efforts. 
    more » « less
  • Citation Formats
  • MLA
  • APA
  • Chicago
  • BibTeX
  • Save / Share this Record
  • Send to Email