Next in my ongoing series of posts related to beneficial microbes in the built environment… using Pseudomonas to restore 17th century Italian frescoes. Apparently these particular frescoes were improperly restored in the 1960’s using some kind of gelatin glue that now causes salt crystals to grow on the art. Both chemical and mechanical removal methods …
During Indoor Air 2011 there was a lot of buzz about this report which came out halfway through the meeting. The full title is “Climate Change, the Indoor Environment, and Health (2011)”. This 246-page report by the Institute of Medicine of the National Acadamies goes into great detail about the various ways that climate change …
Things that jumped out at me from the afternoon session today. For the morning session see here. Norm Pace (CU Boulder) made the point during questions that when we talk about “pathogens” in metagenomic environmental sequences, what we really mean is “sequences related to pathogens” and that probably most of those sequences don’t come from …
I’m currently at Indoor Air 2011 sitting in on the Sloan Foundation-sponsored sessions on microbiology of the built environment. There are a number of great talks taking place and we hope to post some more information in the form of slides later. We’ll probably also post a more formal write-up about some of the discussions …
Data collection and annotation are critical parts of all aspects of science. However, it’s not always clear what data to collect. For example, say you go out in the field and harvest a plant for an experiment. You might note the time of day, the weather conditions, other nearby plants, the soil temperature, the presence …
Another cool example of using beneficial microbes in the indoor environment… in this case using Bacillus strains to reduced odors in pub urinals. The company (CBIO) that markets this device called the “Clearinator” also has other neat sounding microbial-based devices such as the “Bactaerator” and the “Baccelerator”. Pretty simple really, they find bacterial strains that …
When people hear “microbiology of the built environment” they tend to focus on buildings. But the built environment also includes things like trains, cars, planes, even the space station where some cool microbiology work has taken place. When looking for work on the microbiology of these environments I came across a small, non-peer reviewed study …
So I’m going to stick with a theme here and try to talk about beneficial uses of microbes in the built environment (like stabilizing the ground underneath buildings to mitigate the effects of earthquakes). Today I came across the research from a group of students at Newcastle University who designed a strain of Bacillus that …
When reading about the microbiology of the built environment there are far far more examples of the negative impacts of microbes on human health and building integrity than the reverse. Therefore, the occasional report of beneficial applications (however theoretical) deserves mention. Today I came across this old report (behind a pay wall) from the 2005 …
Welcome to MicroBEnet! If you’re interested in the “Microbiology of the Built Environment” (small stuff growing in buildings) then you’re in the right place. If you just want to see what this field is all about, check out the rest of the site. If you’re a researcher in either indoor environments or microbiology you can …