Postdoctoral fellowships in fungal taxonomy and genomics; one focused on fungi from dust #microBEnet

POSTDOCTORAL FELLOWSHIPS IN FUNGAL TAXONOMY AND GENOMICS. Keith Seifert is looking for two post-docs, one interested in the identification of microfungi, and the other interested in participating in a genome project, for two-year positions in Ottawa, Canada. The first position is funded by the A.P. Sloan Foundation. A large and diverse collection of 6000-7000 strains isolated by …

Biofilm-forming bacteria get ride on final space shuttle trip (on purpose)

The last flight of the Shuttle Atlantis is scheduled for early July and there’ll be some cool microbes aboard.  Pseudomonas aeruginosa and Staphylococcus aureus are both biofilm-forming bacteria with serious health consequences, particularly in hospitals.  The researchers involved in this project are interested in the effects of microgravity on biofilm formation, and have some preliminary …

Is your pillow trying to kill you as well? More excessive media hype about indoor microbes.

“How your pillow is the perfect breeding ground for gruesome array of pests and diseases”. This headline from the Daily Mail in the UK was one of many yesterday relating to a study presented at the Healthcare Associated Infections 2011 conference in London on Tuesday.  As usual, the study didn’t make any actual associations between …

Is your dishwasher trying to kill you? Maybe, but no evidence of that from this work

A new paper coming out in the journal Fungal Biology is getting a lot of press.  The paper is: Dishwashers — A man-made ecological niche accommodating human opportunistic fungal pathogens Normally, I try to avoid writing up blog posts relating to papers that are not at least freely available online so that anyone out there can …

Viruses aid in the construction of more efficient solar cells.

Like the cement-producing bacteria, this falls under the category of “using microbes to construct the built environment.”  Projects like these have no bearing on the natural microbial ecology of structures, but still go to show that the relationship between humans, microbes,and the built environment is complex and can take many forms. In this work, researchers …