Registration is now open for the 2022 Gordon Research Conference on Microbiology of the Built Environment, to be held June 19 – 24, 2022 at Waterville Valley, NH (USA). Talks and posters will cover broad aspects of ‘Microbiology of the Built Environment’, with plenty of time for networking and in-depth scientific discussions. Conference schedule and …
Registration is now open for the 2020 Gordon Research Conference on Microbiology of the Built Environment, to be held June 7 – 12, 2020 at Proctor Academy, Andover, NH (USA). Conference schedule and registration information is available on the conference website (https://www.grc.org/microbiology-of-the-built-environment-conference/2020/) with updates through the conference twitter handle (@MoBEGRC). We also have funds to …
Following the success of the first Microbiology of the Built Environment Gordon Research Conference this past summer, we are excited to announce that the second meeting is scheduled during the week of June 7 – 12, 2020 at Proctor Academy, Andover, NH. Save the dates and more information to follow!
There has been some interest in our recent preprint describing Oxford Nanopore MinIONTM sequencing for 16S rRNA microbiome characterization and I was asked to write a post for microbenet on this technology. Disclaimers – this paper is a work in progress – our paper has not yet been peer-reviewed and we are continuing to revise …
This is a quick post to introduce a project I have been developing over the past year and a half, called the Pittsburgh Water Microbiome (PWM) Project. I am aware of some other similar citizen science projects out there, so the goal of this post is to receive some feedback and advice, and open this …
The environmental engineering research community now recognizes that it is important to understand the bacterial ecology of premise (building) plumbing systems to control opportunistic pathogens (OP). Many investigations, including those supported by the Sloan Foundation MoBE program, have begun to shed light on the factors driving bacterial ecology in drinking water systems. While the bacterial …
This past Saturday, my wife picked ‘Frozen’ for movie night (no, we don’t have kids). In the movie, one of the main characters was born with the power to freeze her surroundings, which she struggles to control. By the time, ‘Let It Go’ was playing, I couldn’t help but wonder how the repeated freezing of …
Sequencing of PCR-amplified marker regions (e.g. 16S, ITS) for characterization of sample microbial ecology is a widely-used tool in Microbiology of the Built Environmenta (MoBE) investigations. Due to the large amount of data produced by these methods, sequences are typically clustered into operational taxonomic units (OTUs) based on sequence similarity to simplify downstream processing. However, …
The two greatest scientific breakthroughs of twentieth century, if we measure by increased life expectancy, were improvements in our ability to kill microorganisms (drinking water disinfection and the invention of antibiotics). Perhaps as a remnant of these advances, it seems to me that the average citizen has a largely abiotic mindset, seeing microorganisms as agents …