Interesting meeting abstract: Dense Human Occupancy is a Source of Indoor Bacteria

Interesting abstract from Jordan Peccia and colleagues on “Dense Human Occupancy is a Source of Indoor Bacteria“.  The abstract is from the AAAR (American Association for Aerosol Research) meeting which will take place October 3-7 in Orlando, FL.  The meeting has a decent number of presentations about microbes …

Wanted: Sample collections for the Earth Microbiome Project EMP; help make an open Field Guide to the Microbes

A cross – posting here.  On my “Tree of Life” blog I have just written about the “Earth Microbiome Project” and its call for samples.  This may be of interest to those working on the Microbiology of the Built Environment.  For more information see: The Tree of Life: Wanted: Sample collections for the Earth Microbiome Project …

The Playboy Mansion Legionella outbreak story continues: becoming a social media epidemiological case study

Well, normally I would not want to write about things going on at the Playboy Mansion here, or really anywhere.  But this story about a Legionella outbreak seems to have legs (or maybe, flagella).  The LA Times has another article about this outbreak discussing in more detail how social media was used to help track …

Interesting news story by @MatthewHerper in @Forbes on the @IonTorrent DNA sequencing system #microBEnet

DNA sequencing technology, a key tool in characterizing microbes in the environment, just keeps getting cheaper and easier.  Right now there are some really nice technologies out there in machines from Illumina/Solexa, Roche/454 and ABI.  And coming on the horizon are some new systems that possibly will be either “better” in some way or allow …

High levels of Staphylococcus contamination in US meat & poultry #microBEnet

Many news sources are reporting on a new study regarding levels of Staphylococcus in meat: (e.g., see Bacteria seen in nearly half of U.S. meat – CNN.com,  Study Warns of Tainted Meat, and Almost half of meat in stores may have drug-resistant bacteria). The study, by Lance Price, Paul Keim, and colleagues from TGen reports that …

Great collection of free tools for microbiome analysis at the DACC #microBEnet

There is an excellent collection of tools and protocols for various microbiome analyses (genomics, metagenomics, rRNA) available at the Human Microbiome Project DACC site.  This includes downloadable tools, links to online web servers, and PDFs of various protocols.  Definitely worth checking out if you need some tools for sequence analysis.