Very interesting article by Peter Andrey Smith: A Quest for Even Safer Drinking Water – NYTimes.com. It tells the tale of Norm Pace and his lab’s field work to study the microbial diversity of municipal drinking water systems. The work is part of the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation’s program on Microbiology of the Built Environment and …
Sloan Symposium at Indoor Air 2014 The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Program on Microbiology of the Built Environment has awarded a grant to Indoor Air 2014, the 13th International Conference on Indoor Air Quality and Climate, to be held in Hong Kong from July 7-12, 2014. Paraphrasing a quote on the conference web site from …
We’ve recently received an award from the Sloan Foundation to examine the mycobiota from paired house dust and infant fecal samples collected in the first year of life. The main purpose of the study is to examine how the immediate environment (house dust) may shape the gut mycobiota of infants and affect immune activation and …
Next in our “People Behind the Science” series is Kyle Bibby from the University of Pittsburgh. In this interview he talks about his future work on premise plumbing and the hospital microbiome project. Transcript of interview:
ESPN reports that the Tampa Bay Buccaneers management has arranged to have one of their facilities “treated” due to presence of MRSA: Tampa Bay Buccaneers treat facility to prevent MRSA outbreak – ESPN. Seems like this would be a good case study for a team of microbial ecologists with experience in sporting facilities. Calling Project MERCCURI. …
Everyone likes a good mystery story. Particularly when it involves some unknown kind of bacteria growing underwater on spent nuclear fuel rods with no obvious carbon source for growth. Stay tuned.
Just a quick reminder that the Sloan Foundation is offering a postdoctoral fellowship in the microbiology of the built environment and applications are due September 1st. Read our previous post about the position here, see the official RFP here, check out the new FAQ here, and see the selection committee here.
With the publication of the 6th and last genome paper to come out of our Undergraduate Genome Sequencing Project I thought this would be a good time to reflect on how it all went. To summarize, we had a group of undergraduate students go out into the built environment and attempt to find microbes whose …
The most recent Sloan-funded project began work in the lab of Roberto Kolter in early July. The name of the project is “The Effects of Surface pH on Microbial Community Composition and Susceptibility to Invasion”. Unlike many of the previous projects funded by the microbiology of the built environment program, this is an experimental lab …
I’ve posted a couple of times in the past about the potential for using copper in the built environment to limit bacterial growth and/or pathogenicity (e.g. here and here). I’ve heard and read things about copper which cover the whole spectrum from “it’s a magic bullet” to “snake oil”. I’m guessing it’s somewhere in …