Author: Jonathan Eisen

I am a Professor at U. C. Davis. My lab is in the UC Davis Genome Center and I hold appointments in the Department of Medical Microbiology and Immunology in the School of Medicine and the Department of Evolution and Ecology in the College of Biological Sciences. My research focuses on the origin of novelty (how new processes and functions originate). To study this I focus on sequencing and analyzing genomes of organisms, especially microbes and using phylogenomic analysis (see my lab site here which has more information on lab activities).  In addition to research, I am heavily involved in the Open Access publishing and Open Science movements.

Rob Dunn on “The First National Inventory of All Household Life (on a swab)”

By Jonathan Eisen   Posted in Microbiology of the Built Environment
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In dust one can record the actions of storms, the wearing of mountains, the consequences of industrialization. The study of dust has a long history. Geologists consider it. Toxicologists too. Arthur Conan Doyle has Sherlock Holmes look to dust to discern where a criminal might have traveled. But perhaps the most telling feature of dust …

Sarah Zhang updates “What I Learned From Sequencing the Bacteria in My Apartment”

By Jonathan Eisen   Posted in .Featured Citizen Science Microbiology of the Built Environment Scholarly Literature (Journals, Books, Reports) Sloan MoBE Program
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. Sarah Zhang at Wired has updated her post from three years ago about bacteria in her apratment with reference to a new study just published from the Wildlife of Your Homes study of bacteria and fungi in homes.  Definitely worth a look. Source: What I Learned From Sequencing the Bacteria in My Apartment | …

Don’t diss microbial eukaryotes in human gut by calling them all parasites 

By Jonathan Eisen   Posted in .Featured Scholarly Literature (Journals, Books, Reports)
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There is an interesting paper from Julius LukeÅ¡ et al. in PLOS Pathogens that is worth looking at for anyone who works on microbial diversity: PLOS Pathogens: Are Human Intestinal Eukaryotes Beneficial or Commensals? They basically argue (reasonably I think) that the roles of microbial eukaryotes in the human gut have been excessively interpreted as parasitic and that …

Talk Videos from Healthy Buildings 2015 Europe Session on Microbiology of the Built Environment 

By Jonathan Eisen   Posted in Meetings and Talks
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Just got pointed to this collection of videos from a Sloan Foundation supported symposium on microbiology of the built environment that was held at Healthy Buildings 2015: HB2015 Europe Sloan Symposium Videos – Building Ecology The videos are all avaiable on Vimeo.  I have embedded them below: Healthy Buildings Europe 2015 Keynote dr. Miia Pitkaranta from …

More on the history of uninformed, risky microbiology of the built environment experiments  by US Military

By Jonathan Eisen   Posted in Miscellaneous
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A couple of stories with a scary connection to microbiology of the built environment are worth checking out: Story in the SF Chronicle (originally by Kevin Lotia in Business Insider) is a must read for many reasons. ‘One of the largest human experiments in history’ was conducted on unsuspecting residents of San Francisco.   This appears to …