Recently, I have been reading and thinking a lot about what one needs to develop a model system for host-microbiome studies. I am particularly interested in this because I have been working with a few colleagues on developing seagrass, and specifically, Zostera marina, into such a model system. This started with a grant from the …
Just a quick post here pointing people to this news story. I do not know the details of the science /proof here but this certainly seems of potential interest. SEATTLE (KOMO) – Five more deaths have been linked to infections from a mold in operating rooms at Seattle Children’s Hospital, CEO Dr. Jeff Sperring revealed …
So this was a very interesting paper to be involved in. On the one hand all our lab really did was to facilitate some genome sequencing and help with the assemblies, validation of those assemblies, and some genomics work. Standard fare for the lab. But… these were over 100 Legionella pneumophila isolates collected from either …
Some cool new projects funded by NASA including one on microbes in water in space being run by Jiseon Yang at ASU. NASA has awarded 15 grants for new space biology research designed to help the agency achieve its goals under the Artemis lunar exploration program. Teams of investigators will use state-of-the-art Source: NASA Artemis …
Well, I generally am not overly germaphobic but I also avoid public hot tubs like, well, a disease caused by Yersinia pestis. Thus this story seemed confirmatory for me. However, upon closer examination is seems like the hot tub connection here may simply be cases where people walked by the hot tub display at this …
This is a pre-print that just came out from several UC Davis colleagues. I actually think the title is a bit misleading because these recommendations are a lot broader than just human fecal metagenomes. Definitely worth a read! Abstract below: Background Shotgun metagenomes are often assembled prior to annotation of genes which biases the functional …
~15 years after the first project was funded, the Sloan “Microbiology of the Built Environment” program has pretty much wrapped up. Here at microBEnet, we wanted to take a deeper look at the impact of the program on the published literature in the field. There were over 300 publications from the program through the end …
Human space exploration beyond Earth and Moon is a declared goal of NASA, ESA, Roscosmos and other space-faring agencies, with human Mars mission envisioned in the near future. One of the major challenges of the mission is protecting the human crew from illness and infection caused by harmful biological contaminants. To evaluate these challenges in …
A colleague has a question they would love some feedback on regarding PCR primer selection for 16S rRNA gene amplicon surveys. I am posting it below: I am working on a project aimed to determine the influence of long-term fertilization on soil microbial communities. I am sampling both the rhizosphere and the bulk soil and …
Last week, the International Societies of Exposure Science and Indoor Air Quality had their joint meeting in Kaunas, Lithuania. The meeting featured a lot of great research on topics ranging from the thermal comfort of clothes to exposure to heavy metals from e-cigarettes and everything in between. While we can’t summarize the whole meeting here, …