Well this certainly seems of interest to the microBEnet audience Ann Med. 2015 Apr 23:1-8. Helsinki alert of biodiversity and health. Alas the paper is an absurd $52 to access for 24 hours. So all I have is the abstract, which certainly seems interesting: Urban living in built environments, combined with the use of processed water …
Appropriate song to play while reading this post: Doctor! Doctor! – Thompson Twins Despite the many hours we spend inside homes, offices, and other buildings, we still know very little about the microorganisms that live inside these walls. Health-care facilities are very important in this respect, because the humans inside these buildings are often immunocompromised: they are …
There are few constants in this world. One exception, however, is the passing of day to night, which has gone on without fail since life first emerged on Earth. Early life quickly learned to anticipate changes associated with light and dark. This ability to tell time – to peer into the immediate future – was …
There is an interesting and potentially very useful paper just out: Optimized DNA extraction and metagenomic sequencing of airborne microbial communities A brief summary from the journal: This protocol enables collection of airborne particulate matter; and after sample pretreatment, it allows sufficient quantities of microbial DNA to be extracted and prepared for downstream applications such …
Just heading back (on the train) from the Association of Health Care Journalists 2015 which was in Santa Clara, where I participated in a session on The Microbiome. The session participants: Jonathan Eisen, Ph.D., professor, School of Medicine and College of Biological Sciences, University of California Susan Lynch, Ph.D., associate professor of medicine, University of California, …
Get ready for a microbiome and metagenome festival in NYC! We are excited to announce the first international summit on metagenomics and metadesign of subways and urban biomes (MetaSUB), held in New York City (NYC) on June 20, 2015, at the New York Genome Center (NYGC). This will be held right after a related meeting at …
Today is Earth Day. Every Earth Day I try to do something for, well, the Earth. Yes, there are some aspects of Earth Day that are a bit fluffy and hippyesque (in good and bad ways) but I do think it is a really important concept. Our planet is in need of more care …
Spent Sunday and part of Monday in Washington DC at meetings about microbiomes. Sunday was spent at “The Mother Ship” (aka the headquarters of the American Society for Microbiology” for a meeting on microbiomes run by the Kavli Foundation. I made a Storify of the Tweets from the meeting (mostly from myself and Jessica Green). I …
Appropriate song to play while reading this post: Harder To Breathe – Maroon 5 Asthma severity can be affected by several indoor and outdoor conditions, including dust and microbes. In a paper that came out last week in Indoor Air, researchers from Yale University applied NextGen DNA sequencing to characterize the bacterial and fungal communities in house-dust sampled from …
A 2015 paper from Casas et al (unfortunately no longer open access) investigated the effect of bleach on respiratory infections in young school-children. They analyzed information from Spain, the Netherlands, and Finland. Spain had the most instance of bleach use, which corresponded with a higher respiratory and related infections. On the other end of the spectrum, Finland …