The National Institutes of Health (NIH) Common Fund is seeking input from the research community through a Request for Information (RFI) on potential new NIH-wide research initiatives. Responses are due September 19, 2026, providing an important opportunity for plant scientists to highlight how plant biology, plant-based research systems, and cross-disciplinary approaches can contribute to emerging challenges and opportunities in biomedical research. ASPB has already submitted its organizational response. In so far as ASPB’s comments resonate with you, you are welcome to use this response in formulating your own.
The NIH Common Fund supports high-impact programs designed to address major scientific challenges. Responses to this RFI may help inform future Common Fund activities, including workshops, pilot projects, and the development of new research programs. More generally, the NIH – and particularly the National Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIGMS) – is already a significant source of funding for plant science research. This was highlighted by (then) NIGMS Deputy Director Dorit Zuk, in her 2025 article on page 18 of this edition of the ASPB News.
NIH is seeking input on:
- Critical challenges or emerging opportunities in biomedical and behavioral research;
- Resources, tools, or knowledge needed to address important scientific challenges or opportunities;
- Scientific advances or other developments that make addressing these areas particularly timely;
- Challenges that small laboratories or research groups face related to funding, contracting, or navigating the regulatory landscape; and
- Research opportunities that align with priorities identified in NIH’s broader agency-wide strategies, including “Advancing NIH’s Mission Through a Unified Strategy and the Make Our Children Healthy Again Strategy.”
For ASPB members, this RFI provides an opportunity to ensure that plant science perspectives are represented as NIH considers its next generation of cross-cutting research priorities. Plant systems offer powerful and complementary approaches for understanding fundamental biological processes and can contribute to research questions spanning human health, nutrition, environmental exposures, microbiomes, biotechnology, natural products, and other interdisciplinary areas.
ASPB members are well-positioned to help NIH identify scientific opportunities where plant biology can contribute unique tools, systems, data, and expertise.
You can take action by:
- Submitting comments to the NIH Common Fund RFI by September 19, 2026. Researchers can highlight emerging scientific opportunities, infrastructure needs, interdisciplinary areas, and challenges that would benefit from coordinated NIH investment, including the value of plant systems in advancing biomedical research.
Your input can help ensure that plant science is represented as NIH develops its next generation of ambitious, cross-cutting research initiatives.
___________________________
Plant systems are valuable for biomedical research because many core cellular processes are conserved across eukaryotes. Plants possess signaling pathways, chromatin-based gene regulation, DNA repair mechanisms, metabolic networks, circadian clocks, and stress-response systems that share fundamental principles with those in animals. Their genetic tractability, the relatively short generation times of many plant models, and their amenability to controlled environmental perturbations make them powerful systems for studying how cells sense stress, regulate gene expression, maintain genome stability, and adjust metabolism. Previous studies have also shown that some genes and regulatory components were originally identified through Arabidopsis genetics and were subsequently found to have conserved functions in animals and humans. Discoveries made in plant systems can therefore reveal conserved biological mechanisms relevant to human health and disease research.
If plant scientists are absent from the conversation, important opportunities may be missed at the interface of plant biology, food composition, microbiomes, metabolism, and human health. Plant expertise can also strengthen AI-driven natural-product discovery, cross-kingdom comparative biology, and the development of low-cost, scalable experimental models.
In short, plant science provides more than knowledge about crops. It offers experimentally powerful systems for studying fundamental biology, an extraordinary reservoir of chemical diversity, and an important molecular connection between environment, nutrition, and human health.
Including plant scientists in NIH planning would therefore broaden the available biological models, chemical diversity, datasets, and interdisciplinary approaches for addressing emerging biomedical challenges.