This weekend, National Public Radio (NPR) has been heavily promoting a feature on microbiomes scheduled for Monday, July 22nd. If you are a regular listener, you will catch it. If not, you can go to http://www.npr.org/programs/morning-edition/ on Monday or after and look at the lineup for Monday morning’s show.
Had to post about this recent paper that came out in PLOS ONE, “Spaceflight Promotes Biofilm Formation by Pseudomonas aeruginosa“. Obviously we’re thinking a lot about bacterial activity in space, apropos of our Project MERCCURI work. Really the title says it all here. Biofilms are awesome. Space is awesome. Turns out that biofilms in space …
Giant piles of plastic floating in the ocean might not be what most people think of when they hear the phrase “built environment”… but hey, we built it! Turns out that this “plastisphere” has it’s own microbiome, distinct from the seawater around it. Not surprisingly of course, but cool that someone is looking. Abstract below, …
In my last two posts I described the process of developing the microbial growth experiment we will be running aboard the International Space Station. We’ve tackled growth assays on 96-well plates in zero gravity, at least in theory. How well will this actually work on aboard the space station? To find out, Jenna, Wendy and …
Quick post here. There is a new paper out of interest to the microBEnet community: PLOS ONE: Monitoring Seasonal Changes in Winery-Resident Microbiota. From colleagues of mine at UC Davis it discusses culture independent surveys of the Robert Mondavi Institute for Food and Wine Science Winery at UC Davis. I am running out the door or …
Im a graduate student in Jonathan Eisen’s lab and had a chance to attend this year’s installment of the ASM general meeting was in Denver last month. Among the hustle and bustle of a slew of talks at the ASM-2013, I got a chance to attend the Citizen Microbiology of Built Environment session sponsored by Sloan …
Just received an announcement that a new project has been funded through the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation’s program in the Microbiology of the Built Environment. The project is titled “The House Dust Fungal Microbiome — Influences and Effects.” and the PI is Susan V. Lynch from UCSF. She kindly sent us a summary description of the …
A new report is out from the EPA: Our Built and Natural Environments: A Technical Review of the Interactions Between Land Use, Transportation, and Environmental Quality 2nd Edition | Smart Growth | US EPA. This report has very little specifically about microbes but it does have a variety of things of relevance to the microBEnet community …
Here is part 2 in the “Walking in the footsteps of van Leeuwenhoek” story from Keith Seifert. Part 1 is here. Walking in the footsteps of van Leeuwenhoek (part 2): My van Leeuwenhoek walk “But what if one should tell such people in the future that there are more animals living in the scum on …
Quick post. There is a paper out from Jordan Peccia’s lab (authors Karen Dannemiller, Darryl Reeves, Kyle Bibby, Naomichi Yamamoto and Jordan Peccia) of potential interest: Fungal High-throughput Taxonomic Identification tool for use with Next-Generation Sequencing (FHiTINGS) – The paper alas is not open access so I do not have access to it as I write …