My go to example of this sort of thing is the study of weird thermophilic bacteria gave us PCR, upon which so much of modern biological research and its many applications (including drug discovery!) depend
Wandering Scientist
People often think about risk as referring to (i): Can the project achieve its specific aims? But really what NIH should want is (ii): studies with low probability of huge long-term impact. Here, think of work on gila monster venoms (leading to GLP-1 meds) or bacterial immune systems (crispr)
