I guess I would call myself a microbe beginner. I recently joined Dr. Eisen’s lab and I am getting up to speed on studying, sampling, and understanding microbial communities, especially in the built environment. Now I think about microbes ALL OF THE TIME. On every surface, in the air, on every inch of my body. …
Just received word about a newly funded project to standardize metadata collection within the microbiology of the built environment community. This project is being undertaken by Lynn Schriml at the University of Maryland and her description is below: This metadata standards project, led by Lynn Schriml (University of Maryland School of Medicine, Institute for Genome …
Just got this announcement from ASM for anyone who might be interesting in grant opportunities relating to the microbiology of food safety. Dear Colleague: The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) has requested that ASM bring to the attention of interested members the following Food Safety Challenge Area RFA:
Just a quick link fest here. Lots of buzz going around about various microbiology of the built environment papers. Here are some news stories / blog posts of relevance: Brooke Borel at PopSci: Building Design Influences Bacterial Growth | Popular Science. Me on microBEnet: Studying — not wantonly killing — the microbes around us and the rise …
Imagine you have a camera with a special “anti-macro” lens. This lens scrubs from any image all plants and animals and other “macro” organisms. And this lens also highlights the remaining living things – the microorganisms – anywhere in the frame (including those that were in or on the macro organisms removed from the image). …
Most people who know me call me Bubba. The name you will find on a paper that just came out, is my “official” name, Brandon. However, my first given name is, in fact, Bubba, a moniker I acquired during my brief hospitalization as a premature infant, the very topic of my first first-author paper. Since …
We know that human babies born through vaginal birth are colonized by their mother’s microbes but what about the case of premature infants? A paper published by Jill Banfield and colleagues as part of a Sloan-funded project investigates the connection between microbial communities of the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) and those of the premature infant gut. Premature infants …
Maria Nunez and Hugo Hammer recently conducted a study of Scandinavian house foundations, with the goal of investigating the microbes that take advantage of the often moist conditions found in below-grade structures. The study identified five below-grade “specialist taxa” that were commonly found across all sample sites and analysed the relative ecological preferences of each. …
Researchers in Italy have found abnormally high levels of infectious microbes in the water from faucets at two hospitals compared to water coming in from the deeper areas of the pipes. One of the reasons is that the water is not meeting the chlorine or temperature requirement needed to eliminate harmful pathogens, such as Acinetobacter …
A recent investigation by the New York Times detailed here looked into water contamination levels of the rooftop water towers installed throughout New York City. The towers became common in the 1800s as buildings became to tall to allow for adequate water pressure. Even today the city’s water mains only provide enough pressure to reach the …