Just found this video from the USGS. It is about microbes associated with African dust storms so not exactly about the Built Environment but it still has some connections so thought I would post it. The narration is a bit, well, monotonic, but still … it has some OK stuff in it. YouTube – African …
There is a new #openaccess article in ISME of great importance to those studying the microbiology of the built environment: The ISME Journal – The genomic standards consortium: bringing standards to life for microbial ecology. This article focuses mostly on those characterizing “marker genes” (i.e., genes of value in phylogenetic characterization of taxa) in some way. …
Heads up for what should be an excellent conference: Gordon Research Conferences – 2011 Program – Microbial Population Biology. Topics include a somewhat unusual mix of human microbiome, emerging infectious diseases, and the ecology of algae used as biofuels as well as a variety of other population biology topics.
Last year, iEVOBIO was a fun, interesting meeting for many reasons (not the least of which is that I was the keynote speaker). If you want to learn more about last years meeting check out my blog post: Summary of #iEVOBIO Day 1 #evolution #phylogenetics #informatics #opensource But I note, that meeting was so, well, last …
Quick post about a meeting that may be of interest to those wanting to learn a bit more about next generation sequencing methods and their uses: Next-Generation Sequencing & Genomic Medicine – Concrete Applications for Research, Drug/Diagnostic Development and Patient Care.
A recent press release from NIST (the National Institute of Standards and Technology) is of some interest:NIST Seeks Improved Recovery of Samples from Biohazard Events. In the press release they discuss a new paper in (AEM) Applied and Environmental Microbiology from NIST: Parameters Affecting Spore Recovery from Wipes Used in Biological Surface Sampling. Alas, the paper …
Just discovered this paper by Dale Griffin from the USGS:Atmospheric Movement of Microorganisms in Clouds of Desert Dust and Implications for Human Health. Though it does not focus on the built environment it definitely is connected and worth a read. It is freely available in PubMed Central. Microbes that are found on dust and other particles …
Though much of the work on microbiology of the built environment focuses on health in some way, there are other reasons to be interested in “Who are the microbes in your neighborhood.” One of them is discussed in this paper: Trends in Microbiology : Scripta manent? Assessing microbial risk to paper heritage. Microbes in the …
OK, so the article is a few years old (and not open access) but it should win a prize for best/worst title in a recent paper on indoor microbiology: A glimpse under the rim — the composition of microbial biofilm communities in domestic toilets – Egert – 2009 – Journal of Applied Microbiology I note …
Ed Yong in his blog discusses a recent article he wrote for Wired UK: The real story about space bacteria | Not Exactly Rocket Science | Discover Magazine. Some aspects of the story are very interesting. What I want to call attention to here is that NASA (and other space agencies) should be VERY interested in …