Quick post here. There is a new paper out on bacterial diversity in NICUs: PLOS ONE: Bacterial Diversity in Two Neonatal Intensive Care Units (NICUs).
Full citation: Hewitt KM, Mannino FL, Gonzalez A, Chase JH, Caporaso JG, et al. (2013) Bacterial Diversity in Two Neonatal Intensive Care Units (NICUs). PLoS ONE 8(1): e54703. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0054703.
Quick summary: they used rDNA PCR and pyrosequencing to characterize bacterial diversity in samples from different places in two NICUs and then compared the results to each other and to data from other samples especially those from the built environment. It is a nice, relatively straightforward paper. As the cost of sequencing continues to decrease we will see more studies like this in the future defining the landscape of microbial diversity in various indoor environments.
I note – the work reported in the paper was supported in part by the Sloan Foundation program in Microbiology of the Built Environment, which is the same place that supports microBEnet.
