Molecular Transducers of Physical Activity Bioinformatics Center (U24) | RFA RM 15 012

Opportunity Information: Apply for RFA RM 15 012

The Molecular Transducers of Physical Activity Bioinformatics Center (U24) opportunity (RFA-RM-15-012) is a National Institutes of Health (NIH) cooperative agreement meant to fund a single Bioinformatics Center that will become a core component of the Molecular Transducers of Physical Activity Consortium (MoTrPAC). MoTrPAC is a larger NIH Common Fund effort focused on understanding the molecular changes triggered by physical activity. This particular award is not aimed at running exercise interventions directly; it is aimed at building and operating the informatics backbone that makes the consortiums multi-site, multi-omics science usable, standardized, and broadly accessible to researchers.

At the center of the work is a comprehensive database and supporting software environment capable of storing, integrating, and serving a wide variety of data types generated across MoTrPAC. That includes traditional clinical, physiological, and metabolic measurements (the kinds of data that come out of human studies and associated phenotyping) as well as high-dimensional chemical and molecular profiling data. The FOA explicitly highlights metabolomics, proteomics, genomics, and transcriptomics, but the intent is broad and includes similar technologies and evolving assay platforms. A key emphasis is integration across these modalities so users can relate molecular features to clinical and physiological context rather than treating each dataset in isolation.

A major responsibility of the Bioinformatics Center is standardization. The awardee is expected to coordinate implementation of data standards and ontology-based metadata standards across the consortium, so that datasets coming from different sites, labs, instruments, and protocols can be harmonized and meaningfully compared. In practice, this means developing and enforcing common data models, controlled vocabularies, and consistent metadata capture so downstream analyses are reproducible and queries across studies and timepoints are reliable. Alongside the database itself, the center is expected to deliver tools for analysis and visualization, allowing consortium investigators (and eventually the broader community, as data are released) to explore patterns, compare conditions, and interpret results across tissues, timepoints, and molecular layers.

The FOA also stresses speed and scalability through cloud-based computing. The Bioinformatics Center is expected to provide rapid access to accumulated data and computational tools by using cloud infrastructure, which supports large-scale storage, high-throughput processing, and collaborative analysis without requiring every participating group to duplicate the same compute environment locally. In addition to hosting and serving data, the center is expected to conduct preliminary analyses of the diverse datasets submitted by other MoTrPAC components. That role typically involves initial quality control, integration checks, baseline summaries, and early cross-omics exploratory analyses that can guide subsequent hypothesis-driven work by consortium teams.

From an administrative standpoint, this is a discretionary health-related funding opportunity under CFDA 93.310, using the cooperative agreement mechanism (U24). A cooperative agreement generally implies substantial NIH programmatic involvement compared with a standard research grant, meaning the awardee should expect active coordination with NIH staff and other consortium elements on timelines, standards, releases, and deliverables. The opportunity anticipated a single award (ExpectedAwards: 1). The original closing date listed is March 18, 2016, and the FOA was created October 8, 2015.

Eligibility is broad across U.S.-based organizations and government entities, including state, county, and local governments; special districts; independent school districts; public and private institutions of higher education; federally recognized Native American tribal governments; tribal organizations that are not federally recognized; public housing authorities/Indian housing authorities; nonprofits (both 501(c)(3) and non-501(c)(3)); for-profit organizations (other than small businesses); and small businesses. The FOA also calls out additional eligible applicant types such as Alaska Native and Native Hawaiian Serving Institutions, Asian American Native American Pacific Islander Serving Institutions (AANAPISI), Hispanic-serving Institutions, Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs), Tribally Controlled Colleges and Universities (TCCUs), faith-based or community-based organizations, eligible federal agencies, regional organizations, and U.S. territories or possessions. Non-domestic (non-U.S.) entities and non-domestic components of U.S. organizations are not eligible to apply, but foreign components, as defined under the NIH Grants Policy Statement, are allowed, which typically means certain project activities or collaborations can occur abroad under a U.S. applicant organization when properly justified and approved.

Overall, the opportunity is best understood as funding the central data and computing hub for MoTrPAC: building the systems that collect and organize consortium data, enforcing shared metadata and ontology practices, enabling cloud-based access, and providing initial analytic and visualization capabilities so the consortium can generate consistent, integrated insights into how physical activity produces molecular changes across the body.

• The National Institutes of Health in the health sector is offering a public funding opportunity titled "Molecular Transducers of Physical Activity Bioinformatics Center (U24)" and is now available to receive applicants.
• Interested and eligible applicants and submit their applications by referencing the CFDA number(s): 93.310.
• This funding opportunity was created on 2015-10-08.
• Applicants must submit their applications by 2016-03-18. (Agency may still review applications by suitable applicants for the remaining/unused allocated funding in 2026.)
• The number of recipients for this funding is limited to 1 candidate(s).
• Eligible applicants include: State governments, County governments, City or township governments, Special district governments, Independent school districts, Public and State controlled institutions of higher education, Native American tribal governments (Federally recognized), Public housing authorities/Indian housing authorities, Native American tribal organizations (other than Federally recognized tribal governments), Nonprofits having a 501 (c) (3) status with the IRS, other than institutions of higher education, Nonprofits that do not have a 501 (c) (3) status with the IRS, other than institutions of higher education, Private institutions of higher education, For-profit organizations other than small businesses, Small businesses, Others.

Apply for RFA RM 15 012

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