Meeting: Chemistry of Microbiomes in Human Environments – 11/9/16

November 9 Seminar: The Chemistry of Microbiomes in Human Environments Hosted by the Chemical Sciences Roundtable Wednesday, November 9 2pm – 5pm EDT When most people think about microbes, they think disease. For well over 100 years the medical community’s mantra has been that “the only good bug is a dead bug.” But the functions …

From @teamwaxman in STAT: pharma waste and antibiotic resistance

Waste released from pharmaceutical plants in India and China is contributing to the spread of antibiotic-resistant superbugs. So this is certainly interesting.  There is an opinion piece in STAT by Henry Waxman and Bill Corr from Waxman Strategies: Waste from pharmaceutical plants promotes antibiotic-resistant superbugs.  It is of interest both because we are almost certainly in …

Metagenomics workshop taught by Titus Brown and Harriet Alexander

This is definitely worth checking out. Titus Brown and Harriet Alexander taught a two day metagenomics workshop at UCSD and they have written up some details about it and posted videos. Wrap up blog: titus-blog/2016-metagenom ics-workshop-at-sio.rst at public · ctb/titus-blog · GitHub All the docs here: http://2016-metagenomics-sio.readthedocs.io/en/latest/ Videos

Wanted – recommended service providers for microbial sequencing (genomes, rRNA, metagenomes, etc)

In January 2014 I wrote this post about “microbiome” sequencing services. I have gotten many outside requests for the following information — what places (companies, Universities, government agencies, etc) provide contract services for rRNA PCR and sequencing? Source: Request — Information on Places that do rRNA sequencing as a service — microBEnet: the microbiology of the …

IRIS AI and a wondrous rabbit hole of a labelled network of scientific papers

Got an email from the developers of IRIS AI the other day: And decided to play around with it. So I went to our Zotero collection on microbiology of the built environment: From there I got a paper and found it’s URL: Meadow, J. F., Altrichter, A. E., Kembel, S. W., Kline, J., Mhuireach, G., Moriyama, M., Northcutt, …

Good germs. Bad germs. An interesting new citizen microbiology project.

This is definitely worth checking out – a Citizen Microbiology project on the Built Environment From the Good Germs project. More on the project: There is a growing popular and policy interest in the microbiome, and the possibilities of more nuanced or ‘probiotic’ ways of living with germs. To date however there has been limited …

OMG – I want one: “Smartphone Microscope Lets You Play Games With Microbes”

OMG.  I want one. I want two. No – I want dozens. Caption from Gizmodo: “Introducing the LudusScope, a 3D-printed, open-sourced system that lets you control and play games with living microbes on your smartphone. Tormenting single-celled organisms has never been so much fun.” Source: This Smartphone Microscope Lets You Play Games With Microbes   …