[en] A comprehensive program for the development and use of particle simulation techniques for solving the gyrokinetic Vlasov-Maxwell equations on massively parallel computers has been carried out at Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory. This is a key element of our ongoing theoretical efforts to systematically investigate physics issues vital to understanding tokamak plasmas. In this paper, our focus is on spatial-gradient-driven microinstabilities. Their importance is supported by the recent progress in achieving a physics-based understanding of anomalous transport in toroidal systems which has been based on the proposition that these drift-type electrostatic modes dependent on ion temperature gradient (ITG) and trapped particle effects are dominant in the bulk (''confinement'') region. Although their presence is consistent with a number of significant confinement trends, results from high temperature tokamaks such as TFTR have highlighted the need for better insight into the nonlinear properties of such instabilities in long-mean-free-path plasmas. In addressing this general issue, we report important new results including (i) the first fully toroidal 3D gyrokinetic simulation of ITG modes and (ii) realistic toroidal eigenmode calculations demonstrating the unique capability to deal with large scale kinetic behavior extending over many rational surfaces. The effects of ITG modes (iii) on the inward pinch of impurities in 3D slab geometry and (iv) on the existence of microtearing modes in 2D slab are also discussed. Finally, (v) sheared toroidal flow effects on trapped-particle modes are presented