Not quite space, but microbes in high altitudes

Thanks to a recent tweet, I saw a paper I would have surely otherwise missed: A method for sampling microbial aerosols using high altitude balloons in the Journal of Microbiological Methods. A method for sampling microbial aerosols using high altitude balloons w/ @nbryan5 http://t.co/jyXLOjEdP7 — Cameron Thrash (@DrJCThrash) November 11, 2014 The proud LSU Tiger …

Planning some space travel? Don’t forget your microbes

For many years I have been worried about how space travel will affect microbiomes – of the space vehicles and of the residents (people, other animals, plants, etc).  This is one of the reasons we started Project MERCCURI and get involved in looking at the microbes on the International Space Station.  It is also why …

microbiology of the Built Environment network (#microBEnet) 10/14 roundup and newsletter

We publish a newsletter every month here at microBEnet.  And I thought it would be good to also publish to the blog the various summaries and roundups from the newsletter.  Past newsletters are archived here.  Here are some of the highlights from this latest newsletter. MicroBEnet Blogs A summary of the recent topics posted on microBE.net …

Kentucky Whiskey Fungus

We’ve posted in the past about Baudoinia, also known as the Kentucky whiskey fungus that grows on buildings near distilleries.   See our previous posts here and here.  This fungus was named and characterized by James Scott from the University of Toronto.  Once people affected by the fungus could pin it on the distilleries, the lawsuits …

All we are is dust mites (and their microbiomes) in the wind

There is a new genome paper out that should be of interest to many thinking about the built environment, microbes and allergens and related topics: The draft genome, transcriptome, and microbiome of Dermatophagoides farinae reveal a broad spectrum of dust mite allergens.  Published as an open access paper (yay) in the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology …

Report on the Animals in the Built Environment Workshop

On October 7th and 8th 2014, we held a workshop at the University of California, Davis entitled Animals in the Built Environment. The aim of this workshop was to catalyze the study of the microbiology of built environments where animals live by bringing together experts in animal health, building science and microbiology to discuss why these systems are …

If you think your city subway only consists of smelly disgruntled commuters, think again…

Note by Jonathan Eisen Last week I saw an interesting new paper in AEM entitled: Indoor-Air Microbiome in an Urban Subway Network: Diversity and Dynamics.  I thought it was of relveance of microBEnet so I wrote to the senior author Dr. Patrick Lee from the School of Energy and Environment and the City University of Hong Kong inviting …