    [House Hearing, 116 Congress]
    [From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]

                              BIOLOGICAL RESEARCH
                          AT THE DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY:
                      LEVERAGING DOE'S UNIQUE CAPABILITIES
                      TO RESPOND TO THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC

    =======================================================================

                                    HEARING

                                   BEFORE THE

                             SUBCOMMITTEE ON ENERGY

                                     OF THE

                          COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE, SPACE,
                                 AND TECHNOLOGY
                            HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

                         ONE HUNDRED SIXTEENTH CONGRESS

                                 SECOND SESSION

                                   __________

                               SEPTEMBER 11, 2020

                                   __________

                               Serial No. 116-80

                                   __________

     Printed for the use of the Committee on Science, Space, and Technology

     [GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]

           Available via the World Wide Web: http://science.house.gov

                                   __________

                        U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE
    41-312PDF                  WASHINGTON : 2020

    --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

                  COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE, SPACE, AND TECHNOLOGY

                 HON. EDDIE BERNICE JOHNSON, Texas, Chairwoman
    ZOE LOFGREN, California              FRANK D. LUCAS, Oklahoma,
    DANIEL LIPINSKI, Illinois                Ranking Member
    SUZANNE BONAMICI, Oregon             MO BROOKS, Alabama
    AMI BERA, California,                BILL POSEY, Florida
        Vice Chair                       RANDY WEBER, Texas
    LIZZIE FLETCHER, Texas               BRIAN BABIN, Texas
    HALEY STEVENS, Michigan              ANDY BIGGS, Arizona
    KENDRA HORN, Oklahoma                ROGER MARSHALL, Kansas
    MIKIE SHERRILL, New Jersey           RALPH NORMAN, South Carolina
    BRAD SHERMAN, California             MICHAEL CLOUD, Texas
    STEVE COHEN, Tennessee               TROY BALDERSON, Ohio
    JERRY McNERNEY, California           PETE OLSON, Texas
    ED PERLMUTTER, Colorado              ANTHONY GONZALEZ, Ohio
    PAUL TONKO, New York                 MICHAEL WALTZ, Florida
    BILL FOSTER, Illinois                JIM BAIRD, Indiana
    DON BEYER, Virginia                  FRANCIS ROONEY, Florida
    CHARLIE CRIST, Florida               GREGORY F. MURPHY, North Carolina
    SEAN CASTEN, Illinois                MIKE GARCIA, California
    BEN McADAMS, Utah                    THOMAS P. TIFFANY, Wisconsin
    JENNIFER WEXTON, Virginia
    CONOR LAMB, Pennsylvania
                                     ------

                             Subcommittee on Energy

                    HON. LIZZIE FLETCHER, Texas, Chairwoman
    DANIEL LIPINSKI, Illinois            RANDY WEBER, Texas, Ranking Member
    HALEY STEVENS, Michigan              ANDY BIGGS, Arizona
    KENDRA HORN, Oklahoma                RALPH NORMAN, South Carolina
    JERRY McNERNEY, California           MICHAEL CLOUD, Texas
    BILL FOSTER, Illinois                JIM BAIRD, Indiana
    SEAN CASTEN, Illinois
    CONOR LAMB, Pennsylvania

                            C  O  N  T  E  N  T  S

                               September 11, 2020

                                                                       Page

    Hearing Charter..................................................     2

                               Opening Statements

    Statement by Representative Lizzie Fletcher, Chairwoman,
      Subcommittee on Energy, Committee on Science, Space, and
      Technology, U.S. House of Representatives......................     6
        Written Statement............................................     7

    Statement by Representative Frank D. Lucas, Ranking Member,
      Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, U.S. House of
      Representatives................................................     8
        Written Statement............................................     9

    Statement by Representative Eddie Bernice Johnson, Chairwoman,
      Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, U.S. House of
      Representatives................................................    10
        Written Statement............................................    10

                                   Witnesses:

    Dr. Mary Maxon, Associate Laboratory Director for Biosciences,
      Department of Energy, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
        Oral Statement...............................................    11
        Written Statement............................................    14

    Dr. Debra Mohnen, Professor, Department of Biochemistry and
      Molecular Biology, University of Georgia
        Oral Statement...............................................    36
        Written Statement............................................    38

    Dr. Glenn C. Randall, Chair, Committee on Microbiology, The
      University of Chicago
        Oral Statement...............................................    46
        Written Statement............................................    48

    Dr. Kelly C. Wrighton, Associate Professor, Department of Soil
      and Crop Science, Colorado State University
        Oral Statement...............................................    55
        Written Statement............................................    57

    Discussion.......................................................    61

                  Appendix: Answers to Post-Hearing Questions

    Dr. Mary Maxon, Associate Laboratory Director for Biosciences,
      Department of Energy, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory....    78

                              BIOLOGICAL RESEARCH
                          AT THE DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY:
                      LEVERAGING DOE'S UNIQUE CAPABILITIES
                      TO RESPOND TO THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC

                                  ----------

                           FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 11, 2020

                      House of Representatives,
                                Subcommittee on Energy,
                   Committee on Science, Space, and Technology,
                                                       Washington, D.C.

         The Subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 1:31 p.m.,
    via Webex, Hon. Lizzie Fletcher [Chairwoman of the
    Subcommittee] presiding.
    [GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]

         Chairwoman Fletcher. This hearing will come to order.
    Without objection, the Chair is authorized to declare recess at
    any time.
         Before I deliver my opening remarks, I want to note that
    the Committee is meeting today virtually. I want to announce a
    couple of reminders to the Members about the conduct of this
    hearing. First, Members should keep their video feed on as long
    as they are present in the hearing. Members are responsible for
    their own microphones. Please keep your microphones muted
    unless you are speaking. Finally, if Members have documents
    they wish to submit for the record, please email them to the
    Committee Clerk, whose email address was circulated prior to
    the hearing.
         Good afternoon, and welcome to today's hearing on
    biological research at the Department of Energy (DOE), where we
    will hear about how these capabilities are being leveraged to
    respond to the COVID-19 pandemic. I want to thank Ranking
    Member Lucas, Members of the Energy Subcommittee, and our
    witnesses for joining us today.
         Members of this Subcommittee are enthusiastic about the
    energy innovations that are coming out of DOE's national
    laboratories, and rightfully so, given that the labs have
    provided our country with breakthroughs like supercomputing,
    inventing new materials, pioneering efficient powerlines,
    improving automotive steel, and discovering 22 elements. Yes,
    the periodic table would be much smaller without the national
    labs.
         As the COVID-19 pandemic began to unfold in the United
    States, it became apparent that DOE's laboratories and programs
    were also well-positioned to help us respond to the virus. It
    is perhaps not well-known, but this territory of research is
    not new to the labs. In fact, as an example, national lab
    scientists developed a non-toxic foam that neutralizes chemical
    and biological agents. It was this foam that was used to clean
    up the congressional office buildings and mail rooms exposed to
    anthrax in 2001.
         Lab scientists are also credited for developing the field
    of nuclear medicine, producing radioisotopes to diagnose and
    treat disease, designing imaging technology to detect cancer,
    and developing software to target tumors while sparing healthy
    tissue. DOE labs house and operate national user facilities
    like the Joint Genome Institute (JGI), established by the
    Department in 1997 as part of the Human Genome Project. Today,
    institute researchers survey the biosphere and characterize
    organisms relevant to the DOE science missions of bioenergy,
    global carbon cycling, and biogeochemistry. They also provide
    advanced sequencing and computational analysis of genes related
    to clean energy generation and environmental characterization
    and cleanup. Leveraging these capabilities has enabled
    researchers to develop countermeasures against the novel
    coronavirus like diagnostic tests and allowed them to assess
    transmission and evolution dynamics as the virus spreads
    globally.
         This hearing will examine the historic reasons for why the
    Department possesses advanced bioscience capabilities to
    address the Nation's great challenges and to stimulate
    innovation, how this expertise and DOE's biological research
    tools are being leveraged to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic,
    and what future directions for the Department's biological
    system research can provide solutions for our Nation's most
    pressing issues.
         I look forward to hearing from our witnesses sharing their
    expertise on these topics, as well as hearing how the Science
    Committee can best support DOE's biological research activities
    to unleash the next generation of innovation.
         [The prepared statement of Chairwoman Fletcher follows:]

        Good afternoon and welcome to today's hearing on biological
    research at the Department of Energy, where we will hear about
    how these capabilities are being leveraged to respond to the
    COVID-19 pandemic. I want to thank Ranking Member Lucas,
    Members of the Energy Subcommittee, and our witnesses for
    joining us today.
        Members of this Subcommittee are enthusiastic about the
    energy innovations that are coming out of DOE's national
    laboratories. And rightfully so, given that the labs have
    provided our country with breakthroughs like supercomputing,
    inventing new materials, pioneering efficient power lines,
    improving automotive steel, and discovering 22 elements. Yes,
    the periodic table would be much smaller without the National
    Labs.
        As the COVID-19 pandemic began to unfold in the US, it
    became apparent that DOE's laboratories and programs were also
    well positioned to help us respond to the virus. It is perhaps
    not well known, but this territory of research is not new to
    the labs. In fact, as an example, National Lab scientists
    developed a non-toxic foam that neutralizes chemical and
    biological agents. It was this foam used to clean up
    congressional office buildings and mail rooms exposed to
    anthrax in 2001.
        Lab scientist are also credited for developing the field of
    nuclear medicine, producing radioisotopes to diagnose and treat
    disease, designing imaging technology to detect cancer, and
    developing software to target tumors while sparing healthy
    tissue.
        DOE Labs house and operate national user facilities like
    the Joint Genome Institute, established by the department in
    1997 as part of the Human Genome Project. Today, Institute
    researchers survey the biosphere to characterize organisms
    relevant to the DOE science missions of bioenergy, global
    carbon cycling, and biogeochemistry. They also provide advanced
    sequencing and computational analysis of genes related to clean
    energy generation and environmental characterization and
    cleanup.
        Leveraging these capabilities has enabled researchers to
    develop countermeasures against the novel coronavirus like
    diagnostic tests and allowed them to assess transmission and
    evolution dynamics as the virus spreads globally.
        This hearing will examine the historic reasons for why the
    department possesses advanced bioscience capabilities to
    address the nation's grand challenges and to stimulate
    innovation; how this expertise and DOE's biological research
    tools are being leveraged to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic;
    and what future directions for the Department's biological
    system research can provide solutions for our nation's most
    pressing issues.
        I look forward to hearing from our witnesses sharing their
    expertise on these topics as well as hearing how the Science
    Committee can best support DOE's biological research actives to
    unleash the next generation of innovation.
        But, before I recognize Ranking Member Lucas, I would like
    to take a moment to acknowledge that we are holding this
    hearing on the 19th anniversary of the September 11 attacks,
    and to ask for a moment of silence for us to remember and honor
    those who lost their lives, those whose lives were forever
    altered, and our first responders, the brave men and women who
    rushed in to help our fellow Americans.

         Chairwoman Fletcher. Before I recognize Ranking Member
    Lucas, I would like to take a moment to acknowledge that we are
    holding this hearing on the 19th anniversary of the September
    11 attacks, and to ask for a moment of silence for us to
    remember and honor those who lost their lives, those whose
    lives were forever altered, and our first responders, the brave
    men and women who rushed in on this day to help our fellow
    Americans.
         [Moment of silence observed.]
         Chairwoman Fletcher. Thank you. I'll now recognize Mr.
    Lucas for an opening Statement.
         Mr. Lucas. Thank you, Chairwoman Fletcher, for hosting
    this hearing, and thank you for all our witnesses for being
    with us this afternoon.
         During all the challenges and the uncertainties of this
    pandemic, one thing has stood out: our scientific community has
    gone above and beyond in the effort to understand, treat, and
    prevent COVID-19. The Department of Energy and its Office of
    Science and National Labs have been central to this effort.
    Today, we have the chance to narrow our focus to DOE's
    biological research efforts, in particular, the Biological and
    Environmental Research program, BER.
         BER is a high-priority research area within the Office of
    Science that's consistently received bipartisan support from
    this Committee. From examining the complex behavior of plants
    and microbes to developing new approaches to characterizing
    genomic information, the BER portfolio helps address today's
    public health challenges while preparing us for the next
    generation of bioscience R&D (research and development).
         Much of this work is carried out through BER's user
    facilities, including the Joint Genomic Institute, the
    preeminent facility for sequencing plants and microbes.
    Originally created to lead DOE's role in the Human Genomic
    Project, JGI sequencing and analyzes more than 200,000 billion
    bases of DNA each year, 200,000 billion. That's a huge number.
         Another key BER user facility, the Environmental Molecular
    Sciences Laboratory, or EMSL, offers over 50 premier
    instruments and modeling resources to assist researchers in
    understanding complex biological interactions. EMSL also offers
    access to high-performance computing resources to support
    advanced experimental research in the biosciences.
         Dr. Kelly Wrighton is here with us today and her work
    makes great use of the BER resources. Dr. Wrighton is an
    Associate Professor at Colorado State University and a
    recipient of the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists
    and Engineers. I look forward to hearing more from her on the
    value of user access to BER's resources.
         BER user facilities, along with the other 25 user
    facilities maintained and operated by the Office of Science,
    are vital tools of scientific discovery and important drivers
    of national economic competitiveness. No other system in the
    world grants this kind of cutting-edge technology access to
    tens of thousands of researchers each year.
         But the other countries have taken notice. Developing the
    most advanced scientific facilities has become an intense
    international competition. The nation with the fastest
    supercomputer or most complete genomic data set for example,
    will hold a distinct advantage in nearly every field from
    materials science to predictive atmospheric modeling.
         Office of Science programs like BER need robust Federal
    support for large-scale user facilities, which academia and
    industry simply cannot afford. This is why the key component of
    my bill, H.R. 5685, the ``Securing American Leadership in
    Science and Technology Act'', is a comprehensive authorization
    of the BER program, which includes a user facility development
    program and authorization of important initiatives like the
    Bioenergy Research Centers. This legislation also doubles
    funding for the entire Office of Science over the next 10
    years. This significant investment is essential to U.S.
    leadership in Biological and Environmental Research.
         Whether it's COVID-19 or the next public health challenge,
    our understanding of these complex systems is dependent on the
    basic research conducted by BER and the Office of Science. I
    urge my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to join me in
    focusing our limited legislative days on these bipartisan
    programs.
         I once again want to thank our witnesses for being here
    today, and I look forward to a productive discussion. And thank
    you, Chairwoman Fletcher, and I yield back the balance of my
    time.
         [The prepared statement of Mr. Lucas follows:]

        Thank you, Chairwoman Fletcher for hosting this hearing,
    and thank you to all our witnesses for being with us this
    afternoon.
        During all the challenges and uncertainties of this
    pandemic, one thing has stood out: our scientific community has
    gone above and beyond in the effort to understand, treat, and
    prevent COVID-19.
        The Department of Energy and its Office of Science and
    National Labs have been central to this effort. Today we have
    the chance to narrow our focus to DOE's biological research
    efforts-in particular, the Biological and Environmental
    Research program, or B.E.R.
        B.E.R. is a high-priority research area within the Office
    of Science that has consistently received bipartisan support
    from this Committee. From examining the complex behavior of
    plants and microbes to developing new approaches to
    characterizing genomic information--the B.E.R. portfolio helps
    address today's public health challenges while preparing us for
    the next generation of bioscience R&D.
        Much of this work is carried out through B.E.R.'s user
    facilities, including the Joint Genome Institute, the
    preeminent facility for sequencing plants and microbes.
    Originally created to lead DOE's role in the Human Genome
    Project, JGI sequences and analyzes more than 200,000 billion
    bases of DNA each year.
        Another key B.E.R. user facility, the Environmental
    Molecular Sciences Laboratory, or EMSL, offers over 50 premier
    instruments and modeling resources to assist researchers in
    understanding complex biological interactions. EMSL also offers
    access to high performance computing resources to support
    advanced experimental research in the biosciences.
        Dr. Kelly Wrighton is here with us today and her work makes
    great use of B.E.R. resources. Dr. Wrighton is an Associate
    Professor at Colorado State University and a recipient of the
    Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers. I
    look forward to hearing more from her on the value of user
    access to B.E.R.'s resources.
        B.E.R. user facilities, along with the other 25 user
    facilities maintained and operated by the Office of Science,
    are vital tools of scientific discovery and important drivers
    of national economic competitiveness. No other system in the
    world grants this kind of cutting-edge technology access to
    tens of thousands of researchers each year.
        But other countries have taken notice. Developing the most
    advanced scientific facilities has become an intense
    international competition. The nation with the fastest
    supercomputer or most complete genomic data set, for example,
    will hold a distinct advantage in nearly every field from
    materials science to predictive atmospheric modeling.
        Office of Science programs like B.E.R. need robust Federal
    support for large-scale user facilities, which academia and
    industry simply cannot afford. This is why a key component of
    my bill, H.R. 5685, the Securing American Leadership in Science
    and Technology Act, is a comprehensive authorization of the
    B.E.R. program, which includes a user facility development
    program and authorization of important initiatives like the
    Bioenergy Research Centers. This legislation also doubles
    funding for the entire Office of Science over ten years.
        This significant investment is essential to U.S. leadership
    in biological and environmental research. Whether it's COVID-19
    or the next public health challenge, our understanding of these
    complex systems is dependent on the basic research conducted by
    B.E.R. and the Office of Science. I urge my colleagues on both
    sides of the aisle tojoin me in focusing our limited
    legislative days on these bipartisan programs.
        I once again want to thank our witnesses for being here
    today. I look forward to a productive discussion. Thank you
    Chairwoman Fletcher and I yield back the balance of my time.

         Chairwoman Fletcher. Thank you very much, Mr. Lucas.
         I will now recognize the Chairwoman of the Full Committee,
    Ms. Johnson, for an opening Statement.
         Chairwoman Johnson. Thank you very much, Mrs. Fletcher and
    Mr. Lucas, for holding this hearing today, and thank you to all
    the witnesses for being with us today.
         We meet to discuss the groundbreaking bioscience research
    supported by the Department of Energy's Biological and
    Environmental Research program, and how these capabilities are
    now being used to better understand the novel COVID-19 virus.
         DOE stewards many unique facilities related to the
    biosciences. They range from the Department's world-class
    genomic sequencing tools that have been decades in the making,
    to large x-ray light sources that can be used to identify
    various characteristics of and treatments to the virus.
    Combining this experimental knowledge with the Department's
    state-of-the-art supercomputing capabilities provides our
    Nation with a scientific testbed that is second to none.
         This extensive biological research portfolio has been
    leveraged as part of a broad departmentwide initiative called
    the National Virtual Biotechnology Laboratory (NVBL) that was
    created to help address the issues we face from the current
    global health crisis, as well as those that we can expect in
    the future. Not only are the activities of the Biological and
    Environmental Research program so critical for better preparing
    us to respond to potential future pandemics, but also for our
    national energy security and for addressing the climate crisis.
    Among other applications, research carried out under this
    program will help us develop the low-emissions biofuels of the
    future, which will be very important if we work to decarbonize
    the transportation sector and other parts of our economy.
         Today, however, our focus is on the program's contribution
    to the fight against COVID, and I look forward to our
    witnesses' testimony. I thank you again to our witnesses for
    being here, and with that I yield back the balance of my time.
         [The prepared statement of Chairwoman Johnson follows:]

        Thank you Chairwoman Fletcher for holding this hearing
    today, and thank you to all of our witnesses for being here.
        Today we meet to discuss the groundbreaking bioscience
    research supported by the Department of Energy's Biological and
    Environmental Research program, and how these capabilities are
    now being used to better understand the novel COVID-19 virus.
        DOE stewards many unique facilities related to the
    biosciences. They range from the Department's world-class
    genomic sequencing tools that have been decades in the making,
    to large x-ray light sources that can be used to identify
    various characteristics of and treatments to this virus.
    Combining this experimental knowledge with the Department's
    state-of-the-art supercomputing capabilities provides our
    nation with a scientific testbed that is second to none.
        This extensive biological research portfolio has been
    leveraged as a part of a broad Department-wide initiative
    called the National Virtual Biotechnology Laboratory that was
    created to help address the issues we face from the current
    global health crisis as well as those we can expect in the
    future.
        Not only are the activities of the Biological and
    Environmental Research program so critical for better preparing
    us to respond to potential future pandemics, but also for our
    national energy security and for addressing the climate crisis.
    Among other applications, research carried out under this
    program will help us develop the low-emissions biofuels of the
    future, which will be very important as we work to decarbonize
    the transportation sector and other parts of our economy.
        Today, however, our focus in on the program's contribution
    to the fight against COVID, and I look forward to our
    witnesses' testimony. Thank you again to our witnesses for
    being here, and with that I yield back the balance of my time.

         Chairwoman Fletcher. Thank you, Chairwoman Johnson.
         If there are Members who wish to submit additional opening
    statements, your statements will be added to the record at this
    point.
         And at this time I would like to introduce our witnesses.
    Dr. Mary Maxon is the Associate Laboratory Director of
    Biosciences at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory where she
    oversees Berkeley Lab's biological systems and engineering,
    environmental genomics and system biology, molecular biophysics
    and integrated bioimaging divisions, and the DOE Joint Genome
    Institute. Prior to joining Berkeley Lab, Dr. Maxon worked in
    the biotechnology and pharmaceutical industries, as well as the
    public sector in such positions as Assistant Director for
    Biological Research at the White House Office of Science and
    Technology Policy where she developed the National Bioeconomy
    Blueprint.
         Dr. Debra Mohnen is Professor of Biochemistry and
    Molecular Biology at the Complex Carbohydrate Research Center
    at the University of Georgia. She has studied plant cell wall
    synthesis, structure, and function for more than 30 years and
    currently serves as Research Domain Lead for Integrative
    Analysis and Understanding within the Department of Energy-
    funded Center for Bioenergy Innovation (CBI).
         Dr. Glenn Randall is a Professor of Microbiology and Chair
    of the Committee on Microbiology at the University of Chicago
    where, for the past 15 years, he's overseen studies for
    emerging RNA viruses. This year, Dr. Randall was also appointed
    the Director of Emerging Infection Research at the Howard
    Taylor Ricketts Regional Biocontainment Laboratory where he
    leads the lab's COVID-19 research.
         Last but certainly not least, Dr. Kelly Wrighton is a
    Professor for Soil and Crop Sciences and Microbiome Science at
    Colorado State University where her research focuses on the
    chemical reactions catalyzed for microorganisms. Prior to
    joining Colorado State, Dr. Wrighton was an Assistant Professor
    of Microbiology at the Ohio State University.
         So thank you to all of our witnesses for joining us today.
    As you should know, you will each have 5 minutes for your
    spoken testimony. Your written testimony has already been
    circulated and will be included in the record for the hearing.
    When you've completed your spoken testimony, we will begin with
    questions. Each Member will have 5 minutes to question the
    panel. We will begin with our witness testimony, and we'll
    start with Dr. Maxon. Dr. Maxon, please begin.

                      TESTIMONY OF DR. MARY MAXON,

             ASSOCIATE LABORATORY DIRECTOR FOR BIOSCIENCES,

                          DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY,

                  LAWRENCE BERKELEY NATIONAL LABORATORY

         Dr. Maxon. Chairwoman Johnson, Ranking Member Lucas,
    Chairwoman Fletcher, Ranking Member Weber, and Members of the
    Committee, thank you for including me in this important
    hearing. My testimony reflects my views only and not those of
    the Department of Energy.
         DOE's history of biological research is fascinating from
    pioneering nuclear medicine and understanding the impact of
    radiation on humans to how biology drives energy solutions and
    creates new economic option opportunities for the U.S.
    bioeconomy. Because of the foundation and biology built across
    the national lab complex, the Office of Science Biological and
    Environmental Research program, BER, is today one of the
    world's leading supporters of nonhuman bioresearch. That is
    biology of microbes and plants. BER delivers transformative
    energy and environmental discoveries and solutions and, along
    with the broader Office of Science and DOE capabilities, can
    respond aggressively to national crises such as the current
    coronavirus pandemic.
         Berkeley Lab's founder Ernest Lawrence in 1931 invented
    the cyclotron, a particle accelerator that is the original
    ancestor of today's DOE light sources, the large hadron
    collider, and particle accelerators around the world.
    Understanding the cyclotron's potential beyond physics,
    Lawrence asked his younger brother John, an M.D., to harness it
    for bioresearch, a move that changed modern medicine forever
    and laid the foundation for DOE's biosciences capabilities.
         In 1937, John used radioisotopes from the cyclotron to
    successfully treat a bone marrow disorder and later used beams
    of energized neutrons to treat leukemia, the first cancer
    treatment with beams from a particle accelerator. And with
    that, the field of nuclear medicine was born.
         Bioresearch wasn't limited to human health. At Lawrence's
    urging, Melvin Calvin and his colleagues used a radioisotope of
    carbon to trace how sunlight drives photosynthesis, winning a
    Nobel Prize in 1961.
         Because of BER's deep expertise in bioresearch and the
    Department's role in large interdisciplinary initiatives, the
    Nation turned to DOE and then later to the NIH (National
    Institutes of Health) to sequence the human genome. DOE's part
    of the Human Genome Project was focused on a collaboration
    among three national labs to create the Joint Genome Institute,
    the JGI. JGI contributed 13 percent of the total Human Genome
    Project and, now managed by Berkeley Lab, is the largest
    facility in the world dedicated to genome sciences for energy
    and environmental solutions. With roughly 65 billion genes from
    microbes alone--and that's significant given the basis of
    every--almost every biomanufacturing process starts with genes
    and circuits of genes harnessed to make useful bioproducts,
    including fuels and therapeutics.
         Today, Berkeley Lab's Joint Bioenergy Institute, JBEI, a
    BER Bioenergy Research Center, has leveraged DOE's bio-
    expertise, facilities, and whole systems approach to lower the
    cost of bio-based isopentenol, which has an energy density
    close to gasoline. Ten years ago, one gallon of isopentenol
    produced in the lab cost about $300,000, and today, it's closer
    to $3 a gallon.
         DOE is now able to respond to the coronavirus in similar
    ways to the Human Genome Project response and JBEI's systemic
    approach, that is with diverse teams working together under the
    National Virtual Biotechnology Lab established by Office of
    Science Director Chris Fall and directed by Deputy Director
    Harriet Kung. The NVBL has brought together all of the national
    labs to advance innovations in coronavirus testing, new targets
    for therapeutics, epidemiological and logistical support, and
    to address supply chain bottlenecks. The national labs are now
    leveraging DOE user and collaboration facilities to understand
    the ancient origins of coronaviruses to identify possible
    COVID-19 treatments quickly, develop biomanufacturing processes
    for new therapeutics, and investigate new materials and
    reagents for viral detection.
         DOE's bio-capabilities promise to give rise to future new
    tools to reproducibly study biological systems in controllable,
    fully instrumented lab ecosystem environments, something not
    possible today anywhere in the world. These new fabricated
    ecosystems are envisioned to help understand microbiomes and
    how they control soil carbon cycling and could also be used to
    detect, identify, and mitigate new pathogens in soil systems.
         In summary, DOE's bioresearch enterprise has a significant
    history and an urgent, vital future for delivering scientific
    solutions to drive the U.S. bioeconomy. Thank you very much.
         [The prepared statement of Dr. Maxon follows:]
        [GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]

         Chairwoman Fletcher. Thank you very much, Dr. Maxon.
         Dr. Mohnen, would you like to go next?

                     TESTIMONY OF DR. DEBRA MOHNEN,

                 PROFESSOR, DEPARTMENT OF BIOCHEMISTRY

              AND MOLECULAR BIOLOGY, UNIVERSITY OF GEORGIA

         Dr. Mohnen. Certainly. Good afternoon, Chairwoman
    Fletcher, Ranking Member Lucas, and Members of the
    Subcommittee. It is my pleasure to respond to the three
    questions about the Biological and Environmental Research
    program, BER, within the DOE Office of Science.
         First, why does the BER program have biological research
    and development activities and capabilities? That's a good
    question. One might ask what does energy have to do with
    biology. And the short answer would be a lot.
         First, let's consider DOE's history. DOE was established
    in 1977 through a consolidation of more than 30 energy-related
    efforts in different government agencies, some of which were
    already doing viral science. Thus, even at the time of its
    establishment, DOE was involved in bioscience. The origin of
    the biological research within the U.S. energy effort began
    during and after World War II with the Manhattan Project and
    the postwar Atomic Energy Commission and the development of an
    advisory committee to study the effects of radiation on humans.
    And this was later expanded to studies on the effects of
    radioactive fallout on the atmosphere, terrestrial, and marine
    environments and organisms.
         Thus, from the origin of DOE and the later-formed BER,
    they supported a combination of physical, chemical, and
    biological research. This was carried out by both DOE and
    academic scientists and facilities. And the goal was to meet
    the U.S. energy needs.
         Importantly, due to a mandate for DOE at the time, there
    was a formal division between the basic and the applied
    research, and the Office of Energy Research, later named the
    Office of Science, was given the task to oversee the basic
    research programs. And since BER is a part of the Office of
    Science, it supports and fosters critical basic science to meet
    current and future energy needs.
         In keeping with its historic roots, the current stated
    goal of the BER program is, and I quote, ``to support
    scientific research and facilities to achieve a predicted
    understanding of complex biological Earth and environmental
    systems with the aim of advancing the Nation's energy and
    infrastructure.''
         It's relevant to today's hearing that the knowledge,
    tools, intellectual workforce, and facilities that BER has
    supported and developed over the last 30 years to meet the U.S.
    energy needs have provided cutting-edge scientific
    instrumentation, facilities, and expertise that can immediately
    be applied to national emergencies such as the development of
    COVID-19 pandemic. As mentioned already, these capabilities
    include DNA and RNA sequencing, including the initial mapping
    of the human genome, and to date, having fully sequenced
    genomes of over 12,000 bacterial species, 3,000 viral, and 93
    plant species. This is an enormous accomplishment. Importantly,
    BER has also supported the development of a systems biology
    approach and, via the use of supercomputers and artificial
    intelligence, to help understand and model complex organisms.
         Second, how are the BER-funded expertise and advanced
    research tools being leveraged to respond to the COVID-19
    pandemic? The world-leading capabilities I've just mentioned,
    including the world's fastest computers, have enabled the BER-
    funded researchers to rapidly direct their attention to the
    national and global threat of COVID-19. The DOE capabilities
    being brought to bear include--I'll just mention two here--DOE
    structural biology resources, which have led, among others, to
    a new understanding of the three-dimensional structures and
    molecular actions of protein components of the SARS-CoV-2
    virus, which helps us understand the disease.
         Another example is the work by DOE Oak Ridge National
    Lab's Systems Biologist Dan Jacobson, who uses Oak Ridge
    supercomputers and systems biology to analyze the genome, the
    transcriptome, the RNA, the proteome, and evolutionary data
    from human lung samples of very ill people and also people--
    control samples, as well as taking advantage of the data across
    the world. His team has recently published and has continuing
    to work based on these holistic analyses a new proposed
    mechanism for COVID-19 infection, as well as multiple therapies
    using existing FDA (Food and Drug Administration) drugs
    discovered through this systems biology approach.
         And finally, the future directions of the BER department,
    the importance of understanding and utilizing complex
    biological systems to meet our current and future energy needs
    is particularly evident when one considers that, each year,
    more than 100 billion tons of carbon dioxide are fixed by
    photosynthetic organisms into biomass, and this biomass is
    essential. It's an essential large-scale renewable resource for
    energy, chemical, and biomaterials production. And when one
    considers that fossil fuels, which represent 80 percent of our
    current U.S. energy needs, are simply ancient biomass that was
    converted over time and pressure to petroleum, natural gas, and
    coal. Thus, the importance of understanding plants and microbes
    that produce and can transform this biomass into materials and
    energy cannot be overstated.
         And, in conclusion, just as BER carried out biological
    research in the past to safely develop energy supplies, it's
    future must take the next step in understanding and utilizing
    biology and biological organisms to ensure a continuing and
    strong U.S. energy portfolio. Indeed, the United States should
    lead the world in these efforts, the results of which will
    drive a new national and world economy. Thank you.
         [The prepared statement of Dr. Mohnen follows:]
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         Chairwoman Fletcher. Thank you, Dr. Mohnen. Next, we'll
    hear from Dr. Randall.

                   TESTIMONY OF DR. GLENN C. RANDALL,

                   CHAIR, COMMITTEE ON MICROBIOLOGY,

                       THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO

         Dr. Randall. Chairwoman Fletcher, Ranking Member Lucas,
    and Members of the Subcommittee, I thank you for the
    opportunity to participate in today's discussion about
    biological research at the Department of Energy.
         As was mentioned, I am currently directing COVID-19
    research at one of our country's 13 regional biocontainment
    laboratories, and so I will focus my remarks as to how DOE is
    responding to COVID-19.
         So, earlier this year, we established a SARS-CoV-2
    research core, and the idea behind this is that very few of
    these high biocontainment biosafety level III facilities exist,
    and there are many people with good ideas who don't have access
    to high containment. And so we provide collaborations where we
    provide both the facilities and the expertise to work directly
    with SARS-CoV-2. And this is primarily focused on evaluating
    treatments and vaccines, a little bit on the biology of the
    virus but mostly translational.
         It's in this capacity that I've gained a real appreciation
    for the value of the COVID-19 research performed in the
    Department of Energy. In particular, I've enjoyed multiple
    productive COVID-19-related collaborations with scientists at
    the DOE's Argonne National Laboratory that I would be happy to
    discuss in further detail. But suffice it to say we have
    identified dozens of therapeutics, both FDA-approved and novel,
    that are active against the virus, at least in vitro.
         The DOE's Office of Science's Biological and Environmental
    Research or BER program, as has already been discussed, has a
    storied history integrating biologists, physicists, computer
    scientists, and engineers to address some of the important
    questions of today and tomorrow. Many of the extraordinary
    capabilities that BER has nurtured have been foundational to a
    specific response to COVID-19, which is the virtual
    biotechnology library. This is a consortium of all 17 DOE
    national laboratories, each with core capabilities that are
    relevant to the threats posed by COVID-19. They leverage
    expertise in technology that synergistically interact with each
    other, academia, and industry to advance our fight against
    COVID-19.
         This effort capitalizes on long-held expertise in BER in
    unequaled strengths, particularly solving structures of
    proteins, what they look like, and how to target them with
    drugs or neutralizing antibodies and supercomputing to
    stimulate billions of potential drug target interactions. This
    amplifies our current pharmaceutical capabilities by orders of
    magnitude.
         It is in these two areas that I have collaborated with the
    DOE scientists and am most knowledgeable. I have worked
    together, as I said, to identify multiple drug candidates with
    DOE scientists. Other areas of NVBL emphasis include genome
    sequencing to track SARS-CoV-2 evolution and potential
    development of resistance to treatments, epidemiological and
    logistical support, protected data bases that would host
    patient health data for research and analysis, manufacturing
    capabilities to address supply chain bottlenecks in areas such
    as PPE and ventilators, testing of clinical and nonclinical
    samples, and, more recently, a project designed to address open
    questions about the mechanisms of SARS-CoV-2 transmission that
    will help inform approaches to interrupt chain infections and
    inform strategies that will guide our resumption to normal
    activities.
         The coordinated response of the NVBL to COVID-19 addresses
    critical needs in developing effective cures and vaccines that
    will help end the pandemic and, as applies to the future, will
    help provide a framework with how to more--be more responsive
    to the coming pandemics because this won't be the last one.
    Thank you for your time.
         [The prepared statement of Dr. Randall follows:]
        [GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]

         Chairwoman Fletcher. Thank you very much, Dr. Randall.
    We'll now hear from Dr. Wrighton.

                  TESTIMONY OF DR. KELLY C. WRIGHTON,

                ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR, DEPARTMENT OF SOIL

              AND CROP SCIENCE, COLORADO STATE UNIVERSITY

         Dr. Wrighton. Chairwoman Fletcher, Ranking Member Lucas,
    and the rest of the Committee, thank you for inviting me today.
    As you've heard about DOE's history of biological research, I'm
    here to tell you about how this history of pioneering
    biological research is active today and is perhaps best
    manifested by ongoing DOE investments in user facilities,
    including those of the Joint Genome Institute or the JGI and
    the Environmental Molecular Sciences Laboratory or EMSL,
    amongst more than 20 other facilities. Although I am not
    directly affiliated with these facilities, I represent the
    experience of a self-titled superuser.
         Since my laboratory's inception in 2014, I have managed
    nine different projects and awards with EMSL and JGI. From my
    narrative, I want you to take away a key message. These user
    facilities propel science in this country and especially can
    benefit those like myself at the earliest stages of their
    independent research programs.
         Starting your research program at a university is much
    like starting your own small business. Essentially, your job is
    to take the university's investment in you called startup
    funding and use it to finance innovative science. The goal is
    the short-term investment by the university will enable one to
    obtain data and recognition to compete for external research
    dollars that fuel independent scientific endeavors.
         User facilities played a vital role in my early career by
    allowing me to maximize my startup investment. First, they
    allowed me to scale my scientific scope beyond what was
    possible in my new laboratory with a small nascent workforce.
    Second, they provided me access to equipment beyond what was
    located in my building or even on my campus. Third, they
    networked me with experts who are at the cutting edge of their
    fields.
         My early collaborations with DOE user facilities led to
    scientific publications that developed me as a research leader
    in a few short years. More important, we generated data that
    facilitated my future fiscal independence, forging projects
    sponsored by U.S. industry and the National Science Foundation.
    This symbiotic relationship between individual researchers and
    user facilities benefits the entire scientific community
    because what it enables us to do is collect diverse data
    streams and then this content is subsequently populated in data
    bases that's shared with the community. In summary, DOE
    investments and user facilities are invaluable resources that
    amplify innovation and extend the research dollars of our
    scientific enterprise.
         I know today when we talk about biology we must addressed
    the dominant issue of public health, COVID-19. While DOE's
    direct contributions to COVID-19 research will be articulated
    and were very well-articulated by other members of my panel, an
    area that I can speak to is this idea of translational
    investment. Essentially, how is investment in one scientific
    arena energize or cross-pollinate other parallel scientific
    discovery? You don't have to know biology or envision--that
    detangling invisible microbes from wetland soils or shale rock
    is not the cleanest or easiest of work. On the environmental
    side, we have a long history of developing methods for
    isolating DNA and RNA from these complex matrices, technologies
    that are used by my colleagues doing SARS-CoV-2 surveillance
    research in wastewater and other systems.
         Moreover, even prior to the pandemic, DOE was leading
    investments in viral mechanistic ecology from every habitat we
    explored from deep below the Earth's surface to our soils, to
    our rivers, and even our own guts, research for my group and
    others has recovered new viruses and demonstrated key roles for
    these viruses in modulating nutrient cycles.
         Currently fueled by DOE's support, teams I am part of are
    devising new software for rapidly detecting viral genomic
    signatures and environmental data, as well as defining the
    biochemistry enigmatic within these poorly understood viruses.
    In summary, DOE has developed the foundational expertise in
    technology and genomic sciences that can lead and be translated
    to epidemiological solutions for today and future public health
    challenges.
         Lastly, despite the advanced capabilities user facilities
    shepherd, looking to the future, there are areas to reinforce
    our Nation's capabilities. Currently, genomics information is
    being generated faster than the corresponding capabilities can
    keep up with, and more so than our computational infrastructure
    can mine. This means we have thousands to tens of thousands of
    genes that lack any known function or, said more positively,
    this means there is a huge reservoir of biotechnological
    applications awaiting discovery.
         But what three areas are needed to expedite the speed in
    which researchers can translate genomics information into
    actual knowledge? We--first, we need a coordinated, organized
    computational infrastructure that enables computer-aided
    pattern recognition of this deluge of genomics and microbiome
    data. Second, we need research automation and scale that extend
    beyond the resources of any one lab and even those of our user
    facilities as they're designed today. And last, the heart of
    future discovery lies in creating this multidisciplinary
    higher-risk collaborative space.
         In summary, this streamlined and cross-disciplinary
    scientific vision will allow us to embark on a new era of
    decoding biological information that heavily leverages DOE's
    genomic infrastructure. This trailblazing will result in new
    biotechnological innovations to environmental, engineering, and
    health-related challenges that will be faced by mine and
    subsequent generations. I thank you for your time.
         [The prepared statement of Dr. Wrighton follows:]
        [GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]

         Chairwoman Fletcher. Thank you, Dr. Wrighton. We will now
    proceed with our first round of questions, and I will recognize
    myself for 5 minutes.
         This question that I have is really a broad question
    directed at all of the witnesses, so happy for you all to take
    this in any order you choose and to kind of share with us
    between each other a question about what has happened basically
    in response to the pandemic. DOE launched the National Virtual
    Biotechnology Laboratory, NVBL, which is charged to mobilize
    the resources of the Department's 17 national labs to engage in
    COVID-19 research.
         I would like to hear from you all whether you think the
    NVBL should continue its work even in the future when we are
    not actively responding to a global pandemic, and if so, why?
    And if you could touch on in your responses maybe in what ways
    could the activities of the NVBL help accelerate [inaudible]
    pandemic and how has the creation of the NVBL influenced
    operations or changed the partnerships between the national
    laboratories or with academia and the private sector?
         So I'd love to turn it back to the panel for your thoughts
    on that question, and maybe if we'll go back in order, we could
    start again with Dr. Maxon.
         Dr. Maxon. Thank you for the question. I'll tackle a
    couple of parts of it, the first being do I think the NVBL
    should continue? I think there are a number of good reasons why
    the NVBL should continue, and a primary one being that it's
    likely that this will not be the only pandemic that we'll see,
    and it would be a missed opportunity not to have an NVBL poised
    and ready to tackle the next one.
         You also asked about how has the creation of the NVBL and
    the response of the coronavirus pandemic influenced
    partnerships. I can say having been at a national lab for a
    number of years now, I've never seen more collaboration across
    the national labs working synergistically on a common problem
    with different pieces of it in ways that we are now doing as a
    consequence of the NVBL.
         Chairwoman Fletcher. Terrific. Thank you, Dr. Maxon. Dr.
    Mohnen?
         Dr. Mohnen. If I could be the last one to speak----
         Chairwoman Fletcher. Sure.
         Dr. Mohnen. --I'm not directly influenced--I want to read
    up just a little bit.
         Chairwoman Fletcher. Oh, absolutely. I will come back to
    you. Maybe Ms. Wrighton?
         Dr. Wrighton. Sure. I actually am not directly affiliated
    with NVBL as well, but I think when I was talking about this
    future of discovery and how we can catalyze and build around
    kind of a central unit and a theme, I think NVBL embodies that.
    And so really it was a problem that we were faced with as a
    research community, and it took new disciplinary teams and it
    brought together people that hadn't worked together before. And
    I really think that that's the heart and soul of this future
    kind of innovation is building these kinds of teams to address
    real-time problems. So I really think that NVBL and others like
    it should continue.
         Chairwoman Fletcher. Terrific. Thank you, Dr. Wrighton.
    And Dr. Randall?
         Dr. Randall. Yes, I'd like to first amplify what Dr. Maxon
    said, which is that there will be future pandemics. And I think
    there's a history of investing briefly in an emergency and then
    sort of forgetting, and so the anthrax attacks are an example
    of where we had biodefense apparatus that was heavily invested
    in for 10 years and then was no longer supported. And really,
    as we look at what works and doesn't work and have a response
    to the current pandemic, that can really help through the
    framework of how we respond to the next one.
         From my personal interactions, the advantages are
    teamwork, collaboration, and really bringing forward a
    multipronged attack to address multiple disparate issues with
    this pandemic. In terms of immediate needs--I can talk about my
    own experience. We've talked a lot about the capabilities of
    the labs to solve protein structures. I benefited in that by
    the time we got SARS-CoV up and running here, our colleagues a
    few blocks away at Argonne had already solved structures of
    some of the most important proteins that are drug targets. Now,
    we screen with them, give them the drugs, and within a week
    they can show where the drug has bind to that protein, how to
    make the drug better, and how the drug works. It's spectacular.
         And the other aspect I would highlight is the
    supercomputing. So, the typical drug company has compound
    libraries of 1 to 3 million compounds that they'll physically
    screen, and so there's a consortium of supercomputing that
    basically put together a virtual library of every chemical on
    earth, 5 billion. So you're talking three orders of magnitude
    more and can basically do machine learning and artificial
    intelligence to look at how these compounds bind to these drug
    targets and then whittle that down to the top thousand or so
    and then bring them over to my lab where we can test if they
    work. And quite a few do. And really, you know, there hasn't
    been drug screening thought of this way, this is going to go
    way beyond COVID to any disease model, cancer, et cetera. So
    there's really a lot that can be leveraged not only for COVID
    but for future advancement.
         Chairwoman Fletcher. Thank you so much, Dr. Randall. And 5
    minutes goes very fast, so I will thank all of you for your
    answers. Unfortunately, my time has expired, so I will now
    recognize Mr. Lucas for 5 minutes.
         Mr. Lucas. Thank you, Chairwoman.
         Dr. Wrighton, in your research you leverage expertise from
    the Joint Genomic Institute and the computational capacities of
    the Environmental Molecular Sciences Laboratory. Can you talk
    about your experiences in working with both user facilities?
         Dr. Wrighton. Sure. I don't know how familiar everyone is,
    but if and when you want to access user facility resources,
    basically, you write a grant. That grant gets reviewed by a
    board or a review panel of other scientists. And so basically
    the DOE gives you a charge. So this year, the theme is--and
    then they actually look at goodness of fit. So I've written
    grants and I've basically been awarded many by JGI, the Joint
    Genome Institute, as well as at EMSL. I actually don't use
    their computational resources. I use more of their molecular
    resources.
         So they are innovators. I mean, they have access both at
    Ohio State and Colorado State we did not have the FTICR mass
    capabilities, this mass spec capabilities that EMSL had. And so
    it was a great example of where I didn't have resources on my
    campus, nor did we have trained experts that could use that
    environmental data, but I could collaborate with EMSL and I
    could get detailed information on the molecular structural of
    the soils that I was working in. And so they serve that role
    for many in the scientific community. And so it really is a way
    to enhance accessibility and to really expand your science
    beyond any boundaries that you may have on your campus or in
    your department.
         The same goes for JGI. I mean, the sequencing capabilities
    they have, I could maybe sequence 10 samples. With them, I've
    had hundreds to thousands of samples sequenced in a rapid
    turnaround time.
         Mr. Lucas. Speaking of accessing facilities, could you
    touch on for a moment about how the COVID-19 pandemic has
    affected your access to these facilities?
         Dr. Wrighton. Yes, you know, I have not--it has not
    changed my access to these facilities per se. I mean,
    obviously, when there's lab shutdowns, these facilities were
    also shut down, but only in that sense. And I think that the
    facilities are really just trying to make good faith to turn
    around and get samples processed as rapidly as they can. So I
    have not seen a change in my science in collaboration with
    those facilities due to COVID-19.
         Mr. Lucas. Dr. Maxon, can you give us your perspective
    from the laboratory side of how COVID has impacted access to
    user facilities at the Berkeley Lab?
         Dr. Maxon. Yes, thank you for that question. Many of the
    facilities at the lab have remote capability, the
    supercomputing facilities, the Joint Genome Institute. Several
    of the data handling things obviously happen remotely. The
    advanced light source has remote activities.
         However, there are things that need to get done by humans,
    and we are working very hard now to understand with safe what
    we call COVID controls, face coverings and distance working to
    protect the workers and shiftwork actually, which we never did
    before. We're trying to bring the full strength of the user
    facilities back online because we know the users depend on
    them. So we're doing our best to do that now, and we're not
    quite up to full speed, certainly not at the JGI yet, but we
    are definitely trying.
         Mr. Lucas. From your position now looking forward, what do
    you expect in terms of the requests from researchers from this
    point on?
         Dr. Maxon. I think it will largely depend on what
    researchers can do with respect to collecting field samples. In
    the case of the JGI, we're looking at DNA that comes--nucleic
    acids that come from field samples. And if researchers are able
    to do the fieldwork that generates the samples that then gets
    sent to the user facilities, then I think it will be a good
    response. I think we'll be fine. We'll be able to have a lot of
    users' needs met. If, however, the pandemic limits the ability
    of people to travel to go to their field sites, I think there
    will be a reduced demand.
         Mr. Lucas. Absolutely. Dr. Wrighton, one more question. On
    top of being a frequent facility user, you also sit on the JGI
    advisory board. What would it mean for your researchers or
    others you hear from if BER's user facilities are not updated?
    Would the facilities simply become obsolete?
         Dr. Wrighton. Yes. Yes. I mean, absolutely. I think
    especially JGI does a really nice job and they have a call for
    early investigators, so you're not competing with people who
    have 20 years of experience. You're competing in a much smaller
    group, and they really train you in how to analyze the data and
    how to work with your data. So if those investments weren't
    made, I think that the biggest impact would actually be on the
    next generation of science and early career scientists
    especially because they do a really good job of kind of
    corralling scientists into learning how to use the data and the
    technology, as well as giving access.
         So one of the neatest things about JGI is that they're
    always on the cutting edge. I mean, they're using the newest
    technology. And so I think that's what keeps them so
    competitive and makes them a place that really people want to
    come and bring their data and be part of because of the benefit
    of the cutting-edge technology they offer.
         Mr. Lucas. Thanks, Doc. And Chair, my time's expired. I
    yield back.
         Chairwoman Fletcher. Thank you, Mr. Lucas. I'll now
    recognize Chairwoman Johnson for 5 minutes.
         Chairwoman Johnson. Thank you very much. I'd like to start
    with Dr. Mohnen. As you noted in your testimony, much of the
    COVID-19 research BER has carried out and has built upon years
    of previous research. Can you speak to the importance of
    consistent and robust long-term investments in the BER program
    as a tool to fight future health and environmental crises?
         Dr. Mohnen. Yes, absolutely. I've been working now in the
    capacity of the bioenergy research centers with DOE and many
    BER-funded researchers for over 13 years. And it's very
    interesting to compare just briefly academic researchers versus
    DOE. DOE researchers are very much mission-driven. Academic, as
    was mentioned, you decide on the field or fields you're going
    to develop, and you do a very deep dive. And so what the DOE
    labs have been able to do is they take a mission-oriented long-
    term approach on developing capabilities and then proving them
    and do multiple things at once. They will attack critical
    questions that are mission-important.
         And one of these, for example, with the bioenergy research
    centers, has been to understand both on the microbial side and
    on the plant side the complex array of genes on the plant side
    that make the biomass and modify it. This has led to
    understandings that have allowed us to manipulate plants to get
    them to grow six times more biomass in the field. This has led
    to understandings of microbes that can produce chemicals. This
    has led to the development of systems biology capabilities and
    artificial intelligence to look at huge gene networks. And this
    research has both a fundamental and a potentially applied
    portion of it. And it develops a long-term commitment to build
    on the foundations that are established.
         So even though we've made, for example, great strides in
    understanding how to utilize biomass, deconstruct it so to
    speak, convert it into various types of biofuels, we're still
    at a point where there is, again, as much that needs to be
    learned to make the kind of fuels that are needed for the
    future, to understand the involvement of the microbes in the
    field to biomass growth to be able to respond to climate
    change.
         I'm not sure. Did I answer your question well? I could
    continue.
         Chairwoman Johnson. Yes. Are there other witnesses who
    would like to comment on that?
         OK. Well, Dr. Maxon, DOE has a long history of supporting
    a variety of user facilities used by researchers all over the
    world. In particular, DOE holds several x-ray light sources
    that allow in-depth studies of materials at the atomic and
    molecular levels. Could you expand on how these light sources
    have been used to better understand COVID-19, as well as
    diagnostic and treatment options?
         Dr. Maxon. Thank you for the question. Yes, the x-ray
    light sources have been critically important. One of my
    colleagues on the panel mentioned that the x-ray light sources
    are being used to study in detail the specific proteins of the
    SARS-CoV-2 virus, how those proteins interact with the host,
    that's critically important, and so that's one simple example.
         Yesterday, I saw a fascinating presentation by a
    researcher using the Advanced Light Source with soft x-ray
    tomography to look inside cells that are infected with SARS-
    CoV-2. What does it look like when they're not infected, what
    does it look like when they're infected, and how can we
    understand how the virus can hijack the internal machinery of
    the cell to make more and more viruses? And so I would say the
    light sources have very quickly responded to help not only
    identify the critical pieces of the viral proteins but
    understand how the virus does what it does inside the host
    cells to make advances toward new therapeutics.
         Chairwoman Johnson. Thank you very much. I think my time
    is about to expire, so I yield back.
         Chairwoman Fletcher. Thank you very much, Chairwoman
    Johnson. I will now recognize Mr. Biggs for 5 minutes. Is Mr.
    Biggs still with us?
         Mr. Lucas. I believe he's departed.
         Chairwoman Fletcher. I believe he has, in which case I
    will recognize Mr. Cloud for 5 minutes.
         Mr. Cloud. Can you pass on me for the moment?
         Chairwoman Fletcher. Yes, I can. I will now recognize Dr.
    Baird for 5 minutes.
         Mr. Baird. Thank you. I really appreciate the opportunity
    to sit in on this session, and it's fantastic, the work that
    these researchers are doing.
         Dr. Maxon, you just finished discussing how the proteins
    in the coronavirus, what they do in infected cells. And would
    you care to elaborate on that? I find that very interesting,
    how those proteins, you know, DNA, RNA, the genome, and so on.
    I really would be interested in how the proteins in this
    coronavirus impact cells, lung tissue, for example.
         Dr. Maxon. Thank you for that question. So what I was able
    to learn yesterday in the study of the infected cells, it's
    still early days, so the experiments need to be worked out and
    they are developing some results now. It looks like when the
    virus infects the cell, it then goes through a process of
    creating what's called a replication center. That replication
    center does what it sounds like it should do, and that is it
    begins to use the machinery of the host cell to replicate more
    and more and more pieces of the virus to create more viruses to
    then be released and infect other cells.
         It's really early, though, to be able to detect what the
    actual form of infection is that causes sickness. At least from
    these x-ray studies from the user facility we're just a few
    ways off from understanding that. But understanding at the
    cellular level, the creation of a replication complex center
    and the fact that there are cells that can fuse together to
    have two nuclei in the cell, that was found by these x-ray
    tomography studies, very interesting and still very early days.
    We're not sure what it means yet, but getting closer to
    understanding it for sure. Thank you for the question.
         Mr. Baird. Can I continue on with one more question then?
    So these new proteins, how do they escape the original cell? Do
    you have a feel for that?
         Dr. Maxon. Yes, so thank you. There's a process by which
    the cellular machinery is hijacked if you will not only to make
    more virus but to extrude the virus out of the cell. For
    decades we've understood how cells are infected with other
    types of viruses to then release the virus particles into other
    cells.
         Mr. Baird. Very good. Dr. Wrighton, you mentioned your
    work and getting a lot of sequencing done in a very short
    period of time, but my question to you is what happens to the
    coronavirus as it comes in contact with soil?
         Dr. Wrighton. You know, I think that we're still in very
    early days in terms of surveillance of the coronavirus and
    other viruses like the coronavirus and their distribution
    across different ecosystems, soils, rivers, wastewater streams.
    I think a very active and exciting research that's led by some
    colleagues at JGI that I was actually just speaking to this
    morning about this was we're basically trying to figure out
    ways that we can survey the diversity of these types of viruses
    so we get a sense for the reservoirs of these viruses. Also,
    we're trying to develop new tools so we can look at the
    variation within these viruses so that we can maybe start
    seeing those different populations and these changes and we
    could maybe better track these viruses using their genome tags
    over time and space beyond just the human host but have a
    better, broader environmental context. So I think that's a
    place where JGI will really play an important role moving
    forward.
         Mr. Baird. So I got about 1 minute left, and I would ask
    you and Dr. Maxon both, so the BER in your opinion plays an
    important role in finding the answers you just both discussed.
         Dr. Maxon. Yes.
         Mr. Baird. I see you nodding your head.
         Dr. Wrighton. Yes, without a doubt. And I just think, too,
    it's this parallel investment. I mean, I think anytime you get
    discovery in one end, it transcends and fuels another side and
    back and forth. And I think that's what we really need to be
    armed and ready for this pandemic and the next pandemic.
         Mr. Baird. Well, I think that kind of cooperation and
    collaboration is absolutely essential. And I think this basic
    research is really critical, especially in times like this
    pandemic.
         So I see my time is about up, and so, Madam Chair, I yield
    back the balance of my time. Thank you.
         Chairwoman Fletcher. Thank you, Dr. Baird. I'll now
    recognize Ms. Horn for 5 minutes.
         Ms. Horn. Thank you very much, Chairwoman, and thank you
    to all of our witnesses for this insightful and incredibly
    helpful hearing today.
         My first question is for Dr. Maxon and Dr. Randall. And
    specifically around DOE's laboratories and their involvement in
    past pandemic responses such as HIV, Ebola, and influenza, and
    I'm wondering how the existing research has been adapted or
    reoriented for COVID-19 research purposes right now.
         Dr. Randall. Yes, I can say, you know, in particular two
    past coronavirus pandemics, SARS-CoV-1 and not as big but
    Middle Eastern coronavirus, we're talking about how these
    proteins look, their structures, and they're similar and they
    have similar biochemical properties, so knowing how we could
    make and purify them and what they look like really expedited
    how fast we could learn the structures of the current
    coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2. So that's certainly one example of
    where past research really had us prepared and ready to move
    very quickly with the current pandemic.
         Ms. Horn. Thank you very much. Dr. Maxon?
         Dr. Maxon. Thank you. I will offer one example. I know
    that from the time of the Ebola virus pandemic, the Advanced
    Light Source researchers again used the x-rays to understand
    the viral structure and how the proteins of the virus do what
    they do. So I do know that at least in the case of the Ebola,
    the Department of Energy was in fact involved.
         Ms. Horn. Following up on that a little bit more, Dr.
    Maxon, how is the COVID-19 pandemic different from outbreaks of
    other infectious diseases in terms of impact on DOE's research
    efforts or the way that DOE has approached disease-specific
    research?
         Dr. Maxon. Impacts, there's a couple of ways. I think,
    first, I would be remiss if I didn't say that a major impact of
    the COVID-19 pandemic is on the cost of doing research. That
    has been a significant challenge for us to deal with. So that's
    one.
         I think in terms of impacts of disease research
    specifically around this pandemic, as I said, bringing together
    the labs to pull all parts of what we have as core capabilities
    toward this problem, we have people working with the parts of
    the lab that do biomanufacturing process development, never
    before working on a treatment for an antiviral but definitely
    doing that now and working with companies to do it.
         Ms. Horn. Thank you very much. And I want to turn slightly
    different focus for just a moment. And, Dr. Maxon, continuing
    on with you. In your testimony you mentioned that DOE research
    has drastically reduced the predicted cost of new biofuels. And
    as we are looking at not only addressing the next pandemic and
    DOE's role in research, we also have to take into account so
    many other factors, environment and related factors. And
    biofuels are going to be a critical component of, I think, next
    generation energy. So I'm curious about what advances--or how
    these advances are transferred to industry and what additional
    resources may be needed by DOE to help enable the commercial
    adaptation and adoption of biofuels?
         Dr. Maxon. Thank you. Biofuels, so the way that these
    advances are translated to industry include from the Bioenergy
    Research Centers' proactive engagements with industry to make
    clear that there are new technologies available in the biofuels
    space for licensing, frankly. And I think what's required now,
    there's still a gap, as I mentioned. The costs have come down,
    but the gap in being able to make these commodity products,
    these biofuels at scale is missing, and that piece, being able
    to take a small-scale laboratory proof-of-concept and make it
    commercially scaled, that's the gap that I think is seriously
    missing and we could use some help.
         Ms. Horn. I have very little time left, but thank you for
    that, and I think filling that gap is critically important, so
    thank you. And Madam Chair, I yield back.
         Chairwoman Fletcher. Thank you, Ms. Horn. I'll now
    recognize Mr. Cloud for 5 minutes.
         Mr. Cloud. Thank you. And thank you all for being here
    today. We certainly appreciate the work you do to keep us on
    the forefront of science, especially when we consider the
    competitive global environment that we're in, how important it
    is for the United States to stay on the cutting edge of these
    technologies and these advancements in science. I really
    appreciate it.
         Kind of continuing on with the questioning Ms. Horn had,
    just talking about some of the lessons learned from previous
    pandemics and such, not only are we learning a lot about the
    science when it comes to COVID, but it seems to me we're doing
    things a lot differently, not only coming up with new
    discoveries but also new best practices. Could you compare
    maybe some of the lessons we're learning from an operational
    standpoint, from a best-practice standpoint compared to how we
    approached the work of research compared to previous pandemics?
         Dr. Mohnen. With people that use systems biology and
    computational modeling on plant systems where we don't have as
    much information as we do on human systems because on plants
    there are many, many species, humans we've got a lot more money
    concentrated on humans and model mice, et cetera. So the data
    that you have for human systems is incredible, whereas a
    systems biology approach is always limited by the data set.
         When you get to humans, what I've seen now with what Dan
    Jacobson and others can do with these supercomputers that DOE
    funds, we've got the second-fastest in the world and the amount
    of data out there, both published and in-house from the DNA
    sequencing, RNA sequencing, et cetera, they are now at a point
    I actually didn't believe a couple years ago we would be at.
    They can make predictions by running supercomputers and
    integrating all the data from metabolomics, from proteomics,
    genomics, evolution, and they can come up with hypotheses that
    have a very strong potential of being correct, that can direct
    our thinking. We've gone over, I think, an edge to where now
    you're not going to get definitive answers from this but you're
    going to get answers that are highly probable and then can
    inform the people that go in the lab into the experiments. I
    think this is a turning point that only has become possible
    with these supercomputing abilities and the ability to do the
    systems biology.
         And, finally, the fact that you've got this national lab
    set up where you interact with a bunch of specialists, whether
    they be academic or in the labs to inform the information as
    the results are interpreted. I'll stop.
         Mr. Cloud. Well, thank you.
         Dr. Randall. Yes, I was just going to follow that up and
    say I agree completely. And also the speed of sequencing and so
    forth has ramped up so fast that within discovery of the virus
    we had sequenced within, you know, a week and all the companies
    that are rushing out their vaccines and knew how to synthesize
    spike to get it in their vaccine platforms to where we're
    getting these vaccine candidates years before we traditionally
    have.
         And these platforms were all developed, you know, for
    things that were not SARS-CoV-2. The only thing SARS-CoV-2-
    related in them is the spike protein. And so really there's a
    lot of platforms and best practices in place. I know the
    pandemic seems long, but the response historically is very
    fast.
         Mr. Cloud. Yes. Well, thank you. Dr. Maxon, I was
    wondering from your experience in Berkeley National Lab, you
    know, we can appreciate the research going on, but then we also
    know that our research has been under attack in a sense from
    other nation-states, specifically China. Can you speak to what
    the DOE has been doing to ensure that our research continues to
    be safe and secure?
         Dr. Maxon. I can speak from the perspective of an employee
    at Lawrence Berkeley National Lab.
         Mr. Cloud. Right. Right.
         Dr. Maxon. We definitely take very seriously the export
    controls. We follow those controls very clearly to make sure
    that our research stays our research. We are looking very
    carefully at our foreign visitors' processes to make sure that
    we know who's coming onto the lab and we know what they're
    there to do. And so we're taking the precautions to make sure
    that our research stays our research. We've actually in the
    last couple of years updated some of our badge-in systems so
    that we can keep track of who came in and when. And so I think
    we are at least at our national lab and I'm sure others are
    very, very concerned about keeping things and all of the data
    that we have in our labs secure from attack.
         Mr. Cloud. Well, especially with teleworking, I guess
    that's one of the concerns I have. Can you speak to that at all
    or----
         Dr. Maxon. I understand--thank you. Teleworking does
    present some new concerns, especially many of the computing
    people don't have home systems that can handle the big scales
    of data that they need to use. But as it relates to the
    security of the data, I understand that the IT (Information
    technology) infrastructures at the labs are working hard to
    make sure that we have all the right up-to-date tools. We
    talked about updating facilities earlier, updating the cyber
    aspects of the labs are important, too, just for that reason.
         Mr. Cloud. Thank you very much. I appreciate it. My time
    is expired. Thank you for being you today, all of you.
         Chairwoman Fletcher. Thank you, Mr. Cloud. I'll now
    recognize Mr. McNerney for 5 minutes.
         Mr. McNerney. Well, I thank the Chairwoman and Ranking
    Member and I thank the panelists. I have to say it is exciting
    hearing about what's going on in the labs.
         And my first question is for Dr. Maxon, and it'll be a
    softball. And it's good to see you here, Dr. Maxon. You noted
    that societal challenges such as the need to store carbon at
    massive scale and produce crops and develop crops for changing
    climate demand quick action and quick response. How important
    is it for the United States to maintain its lead in these
    areas?
         Dr. Maxon. Thank you for the question, Doctor. It's
    critically important that the Nation maintain our leadership.
    We have the capability to produce a billion tons of sustainable
    biomass in the United States. It's a strategic natural reserve
    of sorts. And to be able to convert that biomass into the
    bioeconomy's products, including transportation fuels and
    chemicals and reduce greenhouse gas emissions, it's critically
    important that we maintain that lead. We're the only country
    that has a lead like that.
         Mr. McNerney. Is the current Federal investment adequate
    to ensure that we do maintain the lead?
         Dr. Maxon. Well, that's a challenging question to answer.
    I would offer from my own perspective that more resources would
    be very helpful in allowing us to understand how to take
    diverse feedstocks such as agricultural waste and forest waste.
    In California, as you know, we have a lot of forests that are
    overgrown.
         Mr. McNerney. Yes.
         Dr. Maxon. If we could turn that forest waste in--that
    woody biomass into biomanufactured products, fuels and
    chemicals used regionally, for example, like microbreweries, I
    think that would be a very good investment to make, more about
    how to change the feedstock capabilities of the United States.
         Mr. McNerney. Well, thank you. The pandemic has been with
    us since February or March, and we hear about the capabilities
    of the lab complex to address national crises such as the
    pandemic. Can anyone on the panel point to specific
    achievements in this effort that is now helping the Nation
    fight the pandemic?
         Dr. Mohnen. Well, Mr. McNerney, as I mentioned more so in
    the written statement, I was actually very surprised when I
    read Dan Jacobson's work because I worked on the plant
    microsite, so I had to catch up. That systems biology approach
    identified 11 FDA-approved medications that should be able to,
    if the analyses are correct, improve some of the effects of the
    COVID infection. And I assume those are being looked at
    immediately in small clinical trials. There are other people on
    the panel who are more experts in the COVID themselves. But
    even that--and his work's made quite a splash. It's been
    covered in Forbes and many medical journals. And that's just
    one example.
         Then the other example was the work--and I've forgotten
    the researcher's name now. It comes out of a laboratory where
    they used the modeling capabilities and the 3-D protein
    structure prediction. These researchers determined the first
    structure of one or more of the COVID proteins at a temperature
    that might exist and the temperature of the body actually. And
    that gave information on slightly different structures that
    could be important in understanding how medications or cell
    proteins or metabolites interact with them. So the results are
    completely new, up-to-date, and informative. But I yield now to
    people with more expertise with COVID-19.
         Mr. McNerney. Well, I'm going to move on to my next
    question, though. The lab consortium or collaboration have been
    working with the pharmaceutical companies to develop vaccines.
    You just mentioned, Dr. Mohnen, about therapeutics. Is anyone
    able to give an example of collaboration between the BER and
    private companies? And what are the ownership issues involved?
         No one's going to bite on that one? OK.
         Well, my last question, on Wednesday, 78 Stanford
    researchers and physicians issued a letter about the falsehood
    and misrepresentations of science that have been spread by Dr.
    Scott Atlas, who was appointed to the White House Coronavirus
    Task Force last month. This is only one example of the
    Administration's attack on science. What impact do these
    disregards for science have on our ability to fight COVID?
    Whoever wants to step up.
         Dr. Randall. I'm not going to speak specifically to that,
    but what I will say is that public trust in science is critical
    to get people to take the vaccine when we get it, and that is a
    concern.
         Mr. McNerney. All right. Thank you. I yield back, Madam
    Chair.
         Chairwoman Fletcher. Thank you, Mr. McNerney. I'll now
    recognize Mr. Foster for 5 minutes.
         Mr. Foster. Thank you, Madam Chairman and to our
    witnesses.
         So I have one very specific question and then one much
    more general one. The specific one is that there is this theory
    of very severe cases of COVID that goes by the name of the
    bradykinin storm hypothesis. And this apparently was discovered
    or verified using the Oak Ridge supercomputers where they
    analyzed the fluid coming from people's lungs who were very
    sick with COVID and looking for genes that were massively
    overexpressed and saw that the genes involved in--what do they
    call it, the RAS system which is local and inflammatory
    response and blood pressure regulation.
         And so apparently, this hypothesis, which was verified on
    the Oak Ridge supercomputers, explains everything from COVID
    toe to the fact that the virus gets in through the blood-brain
    barrier to the fact that vitamin D is a very promising
    therapeutic and prophylactic. I was just wondering, is that on
    any of your radar screens? Is that a real result coming from
    the DOE supercomputers? Anyone familiar with that?
         Dr. Mohnen. Yes, it absolutely is a real result. It comes
    from Dan Jacobson's work. And he's got multiple papers, and
    I've been reading a couple of them. He is top-notch world-class
    systems biologist. I spoke to him personally for this panel. I
    know him. He works in the bioenergy center. Because he's so
    good at what he does--and he's done two--it's either the
    largest or the fastest computational predictions using
    computers anywhere in the world. He really is outstanding.
         I talked to him about this because I couldn't understand
    how he did it. And he told me--because he had to keep up his
    other work, which was on microbes and plants--as this hits--and
    he knew the systems biology approach and the computers because
    this is what he does. He takes multiple pieces of data, uses
    the computers, looks for connections, then reads the literature
    deeply. He was working 21 hours a day for weeks and weeks on
    end. And he brought in multiple medical people from multiple
    institutions.
         Now, what we have to say is when you do this kind of
    systems biology approach--and--the data looked very compelling,
    and he will say in his paper now it has to be tested. These
    have to be tested in clinical trials. But the data are
    incredibly robust. And I believe it's all being followed up,
    but I know there are many more papers, so this----
         Mr. Foster. Yes, his paper----
         Dr. Mohnen [continuing]. Is top-notch.
         Mr. Foster [continuing]. Identified a number of
    therapeutic targets. And I presume those are being followed up
    in clinical trials, though I'm not familiar with that.
         Dr. Mohnen. I'm not sure, but I believe so, too.
         Mr. Foster. Yes. All right. And my more general question
    is one of the trends that people mentioned in biology is this
    business of what's sometimes called cloud-based biology. And
    that's where you have large farms of robots that will do
    biological experiments. And so this is something where
    potentially, you know, a scientist at a university can sit down
    on their computer, define the experiment we want to, you know,
    get this cell line and modify it genetically this way, expose
    it to this, wait 18 days, and then, you know, section it up and
    send me the photos. And so without actually ever touching or
    owning or taking possession of the biological samples, you
    could perform experiments.
         And it strikes me this is something where there may be a
    role for national labs to actually engage in gigantic purchases
    of initial systems the same way we engage in new generations of
    supercomputers, the new generations of experiments and then
    open it up, you know, in a way very similar to supercomputers
    where different university groups can sort of bid for time on
    these things.
         And I was wondering is that a sort of model that makes
    sense to seed investments that can be immediately used by
    universities? And this seems to relate to Dr. Wrighton's
    comments earlier.
         Dr. Wrighton. Yes, I am so excited, Congressman Foster, to
    hear you say this because this is exactly up my alley. I mean,
    I think that what we're finding at the user facilities is
    they're very successful, and many of the key resources are
    becoming fairly inundated, so the turnaround time or the
    lifecycle of actually processing samples is somewhat delayed
    just because of the demand, and so we really have to rethink
    scalability in terms of maybe not one building but maybe like--
    and there's a--there are some companies that you may be
    familiar with, Emerald Cloud Labs and others where you can
    basically--you know, they have these robotic facilities, and
    you can log in and kind of high throughput with more
    reproducibility and greater efficiency.
         And so that will really allow us to run little pilot
    studies, look at the data in real time, and then do bigger
    experiments. And so it creates a much more dynamic and
    efficient working environment than having to collect 400
    samples and send them all in because that's the allocated time
    you get.
         So I think the future--if we're really going to talk about
    how we can innovate and do more with what we have or even just
    extend our resources in new ways, I think that's a very
    exciting future.
         Mr. Foster. Yes. And it would allow, you know, smaller
    university-based researchers to compete at the very top level,
    as well as dealing with the reproducibility crisis----
         Dr. Wrighton. Absolutely.
         Mr. Foster [continuing]. Some fraction of it at least in
    biology that you publish the specifications that could
    reproduce that at any robotic facility anywhere. I see my time
    is up and yield back.
         Chairwoman Fletcher. Thank you, Mr. Foster. I will now
    recognize Mr. Casten for 5 minutes.
         Mr. Casten. Thank you, Chairwoman Fletcher, and thanks to
    our panel. This is going to surprise all of my colleagues, but
    my questions are about climate change, not COVID.
         I have--and, No. 1, we--you know, just [inaudible]
    conclusions, we have got to get to zero net carbon emissions,
    and we've got to get there yesterday. I am somewhat sanguine
    about our path to get there in terms of our energy use because
    I can identify technologies to make electricity and
    transportation fuels, heat, the things we need for energy. I
    have real concerns about what we are going to do in those
    places where we use fossil fuels as a chemical input typically
    to reduce organic compounds. How do we make fertilizer? How do
    we make steel? How do we make silicon? How do we make
    magnesium? And biology has a way to do that, right, with
    photosynthesis is a way to reduce compounds with sunlight
    input, some of the weird archaebacteria that live on volcanic
    [inaudible].
         And it strikes me that there are interesting research
    projects that are scattered. I introduced a bill that's passed
    through this Committee, H.R. 4320, the Clean Industrial
    Technology Act, which has a purpose to bring all of the DOE
    research around how do we decarbonize those hard-to-decarbonize
    industries and bring it's one place?
         And I guess I want to start with you, Dr. Maxon. Can you
    give us any oversight of what if any programs you are aware of
    that DOE is doing in that vein around how do we use biological
    solutions to reduce inorganic materials? And what if anything
    can we do to help accelerate that research?
         Dr. Maxon. Thank you for that question. Biomanufacturing,
    yes, in fact, the Department of Energy in January hosted an
    InnovationXLab biomanufacturing summit directed on this very
    topic and invited hundreds of companies to come in and see the
    technologies, the assets, and the programs that the Department
    of Energy has at its national labs to do just this, to reduce
    the energy intensity of manufacturing and to use petroleum to
    reduce petroleum feedstocks.
         I mentioned a little while ago the billion-ton bioeconomy,
    the billion tons of sustainable biomass. We're making big
    progress in being able to convert that biomass into useful
    things but can't do it cheaply yet.
         There are a number of other programs. The Agile BioFoundry
    is a Department of Energy program that is looking to speed for
    industry and for academic partners the ability to design
    biological systems to do just this, to harness them to do by a
    manufacturing. So the Agile BioFoundry is a new one. The
    Bioenergy Research Centers are focused on conversion of
    lignocellulosic products, woody biomass, for example, into
    fuels and bioproducts. So there are a number of them that
    exist, but I would say that given the crisis, we could use a
    lot more help in this regard, more of these and more pilot
    fermentation facilities, steel, if you will, fermentation to
    get us to that next scalable leap.
         Mr. Casten. So if I could--and maybe others--I'm not sure
    I've asked my question very well. The lignocellulosic
    materials, making building materials, making products like--I
    get that. What I--and I don't even understand the
    thermodynamics well enough, but if we're going to take, you
    know, nitrogen and make it into ammonia, I know how to do that
    with natural gas. If we're going to take quartz silicon
    dioxide, make it into silicone, I know how to do that with coal
    or to reduce iron oxides into steel. Are there biological
    pathways that we could imagine to use biological systems'
    ability to reduce those compounds? And is there potential to
    scale that up, or is there some reason why those are just--is
    there something about, you know, the way that life has put
    together the thermodynamics that makes that impossible?
         Dr. Wrighton. I think, Congressman Casten, there's two
    parts to this answer. One is the biological discovery, and I
    think, you know, just two weeks ago it came out in the paper
    looking at how you can produce ethylene with microbes using
    enzymes that we never knew about until just this year. And do
    it independent of oxygen, so do it independent of combustion.
    So I think that there is this discovery aspect and there's that
    basic science aspect, but the scalability part I think is the
    yet-to-be-seen part for me in terms of harnessing these new
    biological pathways and overcoming the thermodynamics within an
    organism and then thinking about how we actually can develop
    these precursors with, you know, more neutral carbon economy.
         But I think that we're at the point now where we're able
    to now mine and scratch the surface into the biology, and the
    next phase of our discovery is going to be scaling, again, to
    do these technologies--at least in these really new spaces, not
    some of those like plant deconstruction and they're, you know,
    10 or 15 years ahead of some of the more new discoveries we're
    fighting about, microbial pathways for these compounds.
         Mr. Casten. OK. Well, I'm out of time and yield back but
    will maybe follow up with you offline because I'd like to get
    some overview of where these programs are and what we could do
    to accelerate because I do think we're out of time and we need
    to----
         Dr. Wrighton. OK. I look----
         Mr. Casten. But 5 minutes, we're out of like--our species
    is running out of time. But we'll continue that offline. Thank
    you.
         Chairwoman Fletcher. You are correct, Mr. Casten. Your 5
    minutes has expired, and we will now recognize Mr. Beyer for 5
    minutes.
         Mr. Beyer. Thank you, Madam Chairman, very much. And thank
    you, panelists, for an amazing amount of information. I'd like
    to start with Dr. Mohnen, and thanks for your comments about
    Dr. Jacobson and the work done at Oak Ridge. And I want to
    thank Bill Foster for sending that article of that, which I
    thought was just remarkable, the notion of crunching data,
    40,000 genes, sending in a thousand genetic samples, two and a
    half billion genetic combinations. And the articles themselves
    really lead to some interesting thoughts about treatment. If
    this thing is bradykinin storm thing is real, we could be in a
    very different place in a couple weeks from now.
         But, Dr. Mohnen, you're also the historian, so I want to
    thank you for letting us know that the Human Genome Project
    started through BER. And I wonder because I've always thought,
    you know, Francis Collins, Frank Venter, George Church, how now
    does JGI interact with NIH and with the other folks doing human
    genomes?
         Dr. Mohnen. Well, thank you for the question. I think it's
    a very interesting one. But I think that there are other
    panelists who probably have better information on that
    interaction, so I think I will pass that off to someone who
    knows more about that particularly.
         Mr. Beyer. Dr. Wrighton?
         Dr. Wrighton. So the question--sorry, could you repeat
    your question?
         Mr. Beyer. Well, so you have the Joint Genome Institute,
    but then you also have NIH and Francis Collins, nebula
    genomics, all the work being done at Harvard, MIT
    (Massachusetts Institute of Technology). How do all those work
    together?
         Dr. Wrighton. Yes, and so I think--so to my knowledge--and
    others may be able to have a broader perspective--is that the
    Joint Genome Institute generally focuses on the nonhuman
    aspects of the biology. That does not mean that they're
    decoupled from NIH, and I want to stress that because there are
    themes that you can do in one system like understand enzymes
    and pathways and make discoveries, and then you can take those
    to the NIH--and I've done this in my own career--and apply for
    funding in the NIH and site those same processes in the human
    data.
         So it's not that they're--but the research focus of the
    JGI is typically on nonhuman, you know, research, but it
    doesn't mean the discoveries that are made at JGI by JGI
    researchers or their collaborators do not then go and advance
    through the NIH angle. So they're just kind of different
    themes, but you can take ideas from one area and bring it to
    the other and vice versa. Does that make sense?
         Mr. Beyer. It does. And you set up my next question, which
    I think is for Dr. Maxon because you're the Federal lab person.
    Just reading your testimony and listening to it, I came up with
    the CABBI (Center for Advanced Bioenergy and Bioproducts
    Innovation), the CBI, the GLBRC (Great Lakes Bioenergy Research
    Center), the JREI, the JGI, the ERC (Engineering Research
    Centers), the NMDC (National Microbiome Data Collaborative),
    the APPBD, the EMSL, the KBase (Systems Biology Knowledgebase),
    the ADF, and others. Is this the idea that we have micro-
    focused so many different places or is this empire-building or
    why do we have such an incredible proliferation of separate
    institutes within the Department of Energy just on biology?
         Dr. Maxon. Thank you for the question. The biological
    challenges are enormous, and they are complex. And each one of
    those four Bioenergy Research Centers that you mentioned is
    working on a different way to attack the similar problem. And
    so it's a way to have nonredundant maximum shots on goal to
    achieve the solution rather than putting all your money in one
    basket.
         Going back to your question about NIH for a second, I'd
    like to weigh in on that as well for just a minute to say that
    the National Microbiome Data Collaborative is a brand new DOE
    program that is intended to take all microbiome data, as Dr.
    Wrighton was just talking about, and make that data fair,
    findable, accessible, interoperable, and reusable, meaning it
    doesn't matter whether the microbiome data came from an NIH
    researcher or a DOE researcher or a USDA (United States
    Department of Agriculture) researcher. All those data based on
    the vision, should be able to be findable, interoperable, and
    used together to develop all new theories and hypotheses and
    experimentation programs. So that new thing is helping to
    bridge the gap.
         Mr. Beyer. That's terrific. And one last question, Dr.
    Maxon. We have at least three prominent women scientists on our
    panel today. Does this mean that women are finally assuming
    their rightful place in science?
         Dr. Maxon. Wow. I'll say yes.
         Mr. Beyer. OK, great. Madam Chair, I yield back.
         Chairwoman Fletcher. Thank you.
         Mr. Beyer. Madam Chairwoman, yield back.
         Chairwoman Fletcher. Thank you, Mr. Beyer, great last
    question. And it is wonderful to see the expertise assembled on
    this panel, the incredible women here, but really the efforts
    of everybody at our national labs, the work you have done in
    response to the coronavirus pandemic and more broadly, so it's
    really wonderful for us to hear from you this afternoon. So I
    thank you all very much for your participation, for your
    insights, and for your work for our country right now. We need
    you, and we are so lucky to have you. So thank you so much for
    your testimony here today.
         Before I bring the hearing to a close, I just want to let
    my colleagues know that the record will remain open for 2 weeks
    for additional statements from Members and for any additional
    questions that the Committee may ask of the witnesses.
         With that, the witnesses are excused, and I'm going to use
    my gavel here so you can all hear. The witnesses are excused,
    and the hearing is adjourned.
         [Whereupon, at 3:01 p.m., the Subcommittee was adjourned.]

                                    Appendix

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                       Answers to Post-Hearing Questions

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