Perhaps you’ve heard about Dr. Premsyl Bercik’s recent publication in Nature Communications about the link between the gut microbiome and mental disorders such as depression and anxiety disorder. In his study, he induced early life stress in conventional mice and in germ-free mice by separating new born pups from their mother for several hours a …
My name is Katie Dahlhausen and I am A PhD student in Jonathan’s lab. I am crowd-funding a project to study this fascinating koala biology, as well as investigate alternative infectious disease treatment where antibiotics are not a viable option. Want to help out these adorable critters? You can support the Indiegogo campaign here, which …
A recent publication in Environmental Science & Technology and subsequent review on Phys.org gave a lot of promise for the technology of using microbes to clean up waterways. The study suggested that harnessing microbes is an environmentally sustainable solution to breaking down pollutants in water. I think ‘breakthrough’ is a bit strong of an accolade …
About a month ago, listeria found in Sabra Hummus caused a massive food safety recall across the US. So I got to thinking — how common are pathogens in the food we eat and how is this addressed on industrial scales? Food is processed, transported, and eaten in our built environments multiple times a day, …
When I jetted off to South America a year and a half ago, my doctor sent me with a bottle of Ciprofloxacin in case of an unfortunate bout of food poisoning. I thought little of it then, but what does it mean when millions of travelers head to developing countries with antibiotics? You guessed it …
There is an abundance of literature on how microbes can obtain antibiotic resistance, but not as much about how antibiotic resistance can spread. Jonathan drew my attention to this article today, which highlights the fact that antibiotic resistance can be spread through the air. While I didn’t find the conclusions all that surprising, I was …
Teixobactin has been getting a lot of press since it’s debut in the most recent publication of Nature. And rightfully so: The authors claim that the mechanisms by which Teixobactin works will make it very hard for resistance development. Surely this discovery couldn’t have come at a better time, in a period where we have …
To all of the microbial researchers out there, be careful about contaminants in your cultures, reagents, and equipment! Yes, we all are careful about good techniques and having proper controls. However, this article suggested that perhaps contaminants are surfacing much more in microbial related literature than we thought. This concept isn’t new, and the aforementioned …
In the 2011 paper “Microbial Biogeography of Public Restroom Surfaces” Noah Fierer and others found that some of the toilet flush handles had similar microbial communities to those of the restroom floor, suggesting evidence of the germaphobic practice of flushing the toilet with a foot. I was curious to know if we could find other microbial …
Have you ever said “I boiled a jar to disinfect it”? Well, you were wrong. You should have used “I boiled a jar to sanitize it”. Disinfectants refer to chemical substances used to kill microbes. Therefore, something has been disinfected only if a chemical was used. Heating or irradiating surfaces are methods of either sterilizing (free …