THIS IS A SOURCES SOUGHT ANNOUNCEMENT FOR INFORMATION ONLY. THIS IS NOT A REQUEST FOR PROPOSAL. The Department of Commerce (DOC), National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) is seeking sources. The purpose of this sources sought notice is to obtain information on qualified and experienced contractors interested in providing quotes on hydrothermal vent microbiology in the Mariana back-arc. IF ADEQUATE RESPONSES ARE NOT RECEIVED FROM SMALL BUSINESSES, THE ACQUISITION MAY BE SOLICITED ON AN UNRESTRICTED BASIS. Interested vendors should provide their business size and type.

Period of Performance:
September 1, 2016 - August 31, 2018

Place of Performance:
Multiple Locations including a cruise on a research vessel.

Scope of work:
PMEL requires the services of a hydrothermal vent microbiologist to oversee collection and analysis of microbiological material collected during dives with a remotely operated vehicle (ROV) during a sea-going expedition to the western Pacific on R/V Falkor from November 30 to December 21, 2016, that will depart from and return to Guam.

The hydrothermal vent microbiologist will participate in the research cruise, oversee the collection of microbial samples during ROV dives, prepare samples for analysis on the ship and in the lab, carry out and oversee laboratory work and data analysis, and will disseminate the results in peer-reviewed scientific publications.

The microbiology samples from subsurface to water column along the Mariana back-arc will be used to closely link actively metabolizing microbial communities and their genetic and functional repertoire with geochemical measurements. The organisms studied are adapted to the dynamic and often hostile environment of the deep sea, and provide insight into how life establishes and survives in such habitats. Study communities will include not only free-living and endolithic anaerobic and aerobic chemolithoautotrophic Bacteria and Archaea, but also symbiotic Bacteria that allow their invertebrate hosts to live in the absence of sunlight. The technical approach to examining Bacteria and Archaea in seafloor and subseafloor habitats will include microbiological, microscopic, genomic, and stable isotope techniques. This work will provide a greater understanding of how microbial lineages are distributed in the deep sea, how their metabolic and genomic adaptations vary under selective pressures, and how microbes evolve and disperse across geochemically and physically diverse deep-sea habitat patches.

Requirements:
The contractor must meet the following requirements:
1) The hydrothermal vent microbiologist must have previous experience working with the NOAA-PMEL Hydrothermal Fluid and Particle Sampler (HFPS) on sea-going expeditions using remotely operated vehicles (ROV's) to collect samples of hydrothermal vent fluids and microbes. Experience must include operation of the HFPS using custom software interface. The HFPS sampler can take 18 water samples and 6 filter samples on samples analyzed for each category may be proportionally reduced if operational issues at sea reduce the overall number of samples collected. This must be completed within 2 years at the end of the expedition. 4) Generate and archive microbial data, including sequences of DNA and cDNA from microbial and viral communities, enumeration data for prokaryotic cells. Data collection will begin at sea and occur for -2 years. Raw .fastq files will be deposited into the SRA (Sequence Read Archive) at NCBI (National Center for Biotechnology Information) within 2 years at the end of the expedition. 5) Participation in Outreach and Education activities on the ship.

Bid Protests Not Available