The spread of antibiotic resistance traits is an ongoing and important issue that is poorly studied. This PLoS One study by Lerma et al. is the first to use a culture independent approach to characterize antibiotic resistance traits in the total microbiota present in a goat and lamb slaughterhouse. Lerma et al. found that tetracycline resistance genes (tetA and tetB) and Sulfonamide …
Just a quick post here pointing people to an article of possible interest: Healthcare-associated Infections Keep Industry On High Alert. In the article Sara Marberry discusses some issues relating to microbes and the built environment in hospital design. Among the topics covered are hydrogen peroxide vapor systems, UV irradiation devices, and copper as possible antimicrobials. Also …
Analysis of the growth data from space is ongoing but we have some preliminary results to share: Firstly, 47 of the 48 bacteria grew at least a little bit in space, the only exception was the sample collected from the Philadelphia Phillies dugout. Sorry guys! A number of the bacteria grew quite well in fact, …
After 9 months of technical delays, during which time our collection of frozen built environment microbes went around the earth every 90 minutes, we are finally getting growth data from the International Space Station (ISS)! Astronaut Terry Virts has been taking daily growth readings of our collection of 48 microbes and today (Friday) is …
Just a quick post here about the spreading of C. difficile among patients who visited healthcare settings but didn’t take antiobiotics. Traditionally C. difficile is thought to infect people whose normal microbiota was disturbed by antibiotics. It’s also the target of most experiments on fecal transplants since those have been shown to be very effective …
I generally try to avoid any type of discussion of the age of researchers and I also generally never ask people about their age. But this time it is in a story so I think it is OK to mention: Jack Gilbert of Argonne National Laboratory is on Crain’s Chicago 40 Under 40 2014 list. This …
Just a quick post here on an NPR story that caught my attention “Giving Chickens Bacteria … To Keep Them Antibiotic-Free”. Unlike with humans where determining the effect of probiotics is complicated by a lot of variation in the population (genetic, cultural, diet, etc.), with a whole bunch of chickens it’s easier to measure the …
Heard this story on NPR yesterday: ‘A Universe Beneath Our Feet’: Life In Beijing’s Underground : NPR. It discusses the growing trend in Beijing for people to be living in apartments / basements comlpetely underground. This is happening for multiple reasons and it clearly has some potential big consequences. It does seem like a possible …
Just a quick post here. Found this news story (from Nov 18) doing some Google Searchers: UO student gets EPA grant to study health link between plants, people – Portland Business Journal. It discusses a new grant on “Relationships Among Airborne Microbial Communities, Urban Land Uses and Vegetation Cover: Implications for Urban Planning and Human Health.” …
Every day, diverse microbial communities with cell levels of 106-108 cells/liter migrate from drinking water treatment plants through a complex network of pipes in drinking water distribution systems and into our built environment. Managing this mass migration is critical from multiple perspectives. Some of these microorganisms can make consumers ill, some can contribute to pipe …