The Paul G. Allen Frontiers Group, a division of the Allen Institute, has announced the latest cohort of Allen Distinguished Investigators. 

Eight grants of $1.25 million each were awarded in support of research projects led by 16 investigators. Funded by the Paul G. Allen Family Foundation, the grants will support early-stage research projects with the potential to advance the fields of biology and medicine in two areas: nutrient sensing and protein lifespan, which were selected from an open call for topics through a 2021 campaign called “Ask Anything, Change Everything.” Selected investigators include Yi Lu, who is leading a project to engineer DNA molecules in a variety of ways to detect and visualize nutrients in single cells, and Janine Kirstein and Tim Clausen, who are building a “protein lifespan” kit to carefully track the complete life cycle of a single protein. 

“When we launched our campaign ‘Ask Anything, Change Everything’ to identify key—but currently unmeasurable—biological metrics, the feedback from the research community was overwhelming, and their ideas catalyzed this pioneering initiative,” said Kathy Richmond, executive vice president and director of the Frontiers Group and the Office of Science and Technology at the Allen Institute. “These newest awardees bring bold technological approaches to capture essential but unknown aspects of our biological machinery. Their work could not only change how we view fundamental biology, but also upend how we think about health and disease.”

For a complete list of investigators and their projects, see the Allen Institute website.

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