Some funding opportunities and calls for proposals- HHMI, CIFAR, SciencePrize

Some announcements of possible interest – via the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation’s Marine Microbiology Initiative Dear colleagues, The Marine Microbiology Initiative team would like to share several exciting opportunities in the life sciences that may be of interest to you. Please feel free to share these with other colleagues who may be interested. Science …

Journal of Bacteriology minireview collection on host-microbe interactions

Just got this announcement via email and thought it might be of interest. New eBook Special Collection of JB Minreviews Dear Colleague, The microbial world is a competitive place, and bacteria have evolved diverse strategies to sense their environment and survive in it. These strategies involve acquiring necessary nutrients, particularly when inside a mammalian host, …

Paper of interest comparing taxonomies of SILVA, RDP, Greengenes, NCBI and OTT 

Just a quick post here.  There is a paper of interest I thought I would call attention to: Source: SILVA, RDP, Greengenes, NCBI and OTT — how do these taxonomies compare? | BMC Genomics  by Monika Balvočiūtė and Daniel H. Huson Abstract: Background A key step in microbiome sequencing analysis is read assignment to taxonomic units. …

Call for Input: Grand Challenges and Opportunities for Environmental Engineering and Science for the 21st Century

Of possible interest: Call for Input: Grand Challenges and Opportunities for Environmental Engineering and Science for the 21st Century Committee Appointed and Call for Input: Grand Challenges in Environmental Engineering and Science for the 21st Century To help guide the next generation of environmental engineers and scientists, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine …

Are ‘germ-zapping’ robots useful in fighting hospital acquired infections?

Well, I confess, I am still a bit skeptical of the utility of the “germ fighting robots” of various kinds that keep getting promoted as being useful at various health care facilities. There was a story published today in our local major paper – the Sacramento Bee that discusses this topic. Germs that cause hospital-acquired infections …

3/12 Deadline to Apply: Quantitative Approaches to Biomedical Data Science on the Microbiome

This looks interesting: Source: Innovation Lab 2017 – BD2K Training Coordinating Center From the site The BD2K Training Coordinating Center is organizing an Innovation Lab to foster new interdisciplinary collaborations among quantitative and biomedical researchers to address data science challenges in our understanding of the microbiome. The scope of microbiome, as defined here, broadly describes the …

Quick post – this looks potentially very useful – ATLAS – comprehensive infrastructure for assembly, annotation, & genomic binning of metagenomic data 

OK I have not tried this out yet but this could be of interest. ATLAS (Automatic Tool for Local Assembly Structures) is a comprehensive multi-omics data analysis pipeline that is massively parallel and scalable. ATLAS contains a modular analysis pipeline for assembly, annotation, quantification and genome binning of metagenomics and metatranscriptomics data and a framework …

Reasonably cautious but optimistic editorial on “The human microbiome: an emerging tool in forensics” 

I have personally been interested in microbial forensics of various kinds for quite a while (I worked at TIGR for many years and was peripherally involved in some of the anthrax DNA sequencing and analysis there).  I have even served on various working groups from the US Government discussing the potential for microbes to be …