Another short post here, this time on modeling the spread of hospital-acquired bacteria. Horizontal gene transfer between bacteria is a huge problem in hospitals and these researchers have developed some models for how this process actually occurs in hospitals. They’ve applied their techniques in a couple of real-life situations with interesting results. They found for …
Short post here about a cool-sounding advance in materials science related to microbes in the built environment. A research group at Duke University is working on a material that deforms in response to an electric current, thereby dislodging established biofilms (e.g. on the underside of a boat). Hard to tell how likely this is since …
Not long ago we posted about the effect of copper on microorganisms in the built environment. This topic seems to come up more and more often with information ranging from belief that copper is a miracle cure to strong skepticism. A recent study from the UK adds an interesting piece to this puzzle by showing …
Next in our “People Behind the Science” video series is Amy Pruden from Virginia Tech. Dr. Pruden has recently received a Sloan grant to work on the “Effect of Pipe Materials, Water Flow, and Chemistry on the Building Plumbing Microbiome”. In this video she talks about this project and her arrival in the field of …
Personally I think the holiday season starts way too early… but given the fact that Christmas trees are already on sale (at least here in CA) I figured I could post about this article I came across today: Wyse DM & Malloch D. 1970. Christmas tree allergy: mould and pollen studies. CMA Journal 103: 1272-1276. …
Occasionally I come across a news story related to the microbiology of the built environment that I really want to blog about… but don’t know what to say. Here is such a story about a ski resort in Arizona using 100% treated sewage water for snow making and the concerns associated with that. Blog post …
I haven’t talked a lot about this here, but in addition to the microBEnet website and conference organization we have been running a couple of undergraduate research projects related to the microbiology of the built environment. The first was a project started in January where a team of undergraduates isolated organisms from the built environment …
Just a short post here about an interesting paper that came out a few weeks ago (not open access, here’s the press release). This group showed that the bacterial protein flagellin can exacerbate allergic reactions to house dust (at least in mice). What’s interesting to me is that flagellin itself is not an allergen, it …
Here’s a case of where an interesting piece of basic science, gets written up as a press release that reaches a bit too far, in particular using a headline like “Reason discovered for the toxicity of indoor mould”. That headline is a big stretch from the original article title which was “20-Residue and 11-residue peptaibols …
One of the problems I’ve faced as a microbiologist attempting to learn about the built environment is the incredible amount of snake oil and pseudoscience that swirls around the edges of the field. There’s a huge body of solid, peer-reviewed research in the field of course. But there’s a lot of company-sponsored pseudoscience out there …