“The PO-Driven Model”: A Basic Science Pipeline for the Bioeconomy with Solutions Inspired by Convergent Evolution for Connecting Parallel Research Ideas

Basic science research, also called "curiosity-driven research," is fundamental work done with no immediate economic goals but rather a focus on discovery for discovery's sake. However, basic science research is often needed to seed more applied, economically oriented, research. Both basic and applied research efforts are important aspects of the "bioeconomy," defined here as the contributions to the overall economy from various biology-related fields spanning everything from museum-based natural history research to agricultural food and material production to healthcare. Here, we propose that more collaborative efforts across federal granting agencies in a venture-capitalist-like "PO-driven model" can help drive applied innovation from collaborations facilitated by program officers (POs). POs from NSF, DOE, DARPA, USDA, NASA, and other federal agencies should seek out parallel and complementary research ideas from grantees and provide funds to build teams of researchers who may otherwise be unaware of one another. Researchers working in different fields may also be unaware that the different organisms they are studying independently may have evolved similar traits (i.e., convergent evolution) that POs may recognize and who can then facilitate novel research avenues connecting those independent researchers (we provide examples of some projects inspired by convergent evolution here). In this top-down approach to research funding, the US bioeconomy will be pouring fuel on the fire of scientific productivity in this country.