A sinking feeling: misleading headline but interesting paper on tracking spread of microbes in sinks

There is an interesting new paper out of interest.  I found out about this through Twitter Study reports multidrug resistant #bacteria found in #hospital sinks – New research in @ASMicrobiology‘s #AEM https://t.co/0i7GKoPmUE pic.twitter.com/ZM9gAavL2t — ASM Newsroom (@ASMnewsroom) February 24, 2017   Now this caught my attention because it seemed to be about, well, multidrug resistant …

Genomic Standards Consortium 19 in Australia May 2017 registration open (focus on viruses & microbial euks)

I thought this would be of interest – got it by email We are happy to announce that registration for GSC19 is now open! https://www.regonline.com/builder/site/?eventid=1913695 The meeting will take place at the Stamford Plaza, Brisbane, Australia between 15th-17th May, 2017. The theme of the meeting will be Extending Standards to Viruses and Microbial Eukaryotes. The …

Investigating the antibiotic resistome of rural and peri-urban Latin America

For many years, efforts to profile the antibiotic resistome of the human gut focused exclusively on two extremes of human society: Western, industrialized cities and remote hunter-gatherers. While these studies were undoubtedly important, they overlooked the majority of the world’s population, which exists somewhere between the two extremes. Indeed, three-quarters of the world’s population lives …

Of possible interest – DAS tool for metagenomic binning

Saw an interesting Tweet check out this novel metagenomics tool to reconstruct thousands of high-quality genomes @ChrisMKSieber #banfieldlab https://t.co/67bk8CbFmP — Alexander Probst (@AlexJProbst) February 13, 2017 And this tool may be of interest – it is from a new preprint in BioRXiv.  See abstract below: Microbial communities are critical to ecosystem function. A key objective …

Ants as (Possible) Vectors of Bacteria in Hospital Environments

Not really sure what to think about this article:  Ants as Vectors of Bacteria in Hospital Environments. Published in the Journal of Microbiology Research and authored by Bruna Rafaela Machado Oliveira, Luciano Ferreira de Sousa, Raquel Chalá Soares, Thiago César Nascimento, Marcelo Silva Madureira, Jorge Luiz Fortuna. In a quick scan the science seems reasonable. …

Worth a look: Special issue of @NYASAnnals on “Antimicrobial Therapeutics Reviews” 

  There is a whole issue of the Annals of the NY Academy of Sciences that may be of interest.  The focus of the issue is on Antimicrobial Therapeutics Reviews. Some of the papers are freely available.  These are Resistance diagnosis and the changing epidemiology of antibiotic resistance(pages 5–17) by David McAdams Resistance diagnosis and the changing …

Nice article by @ibikeforfood on Small Cheese Makers and their microbiology work 

Another quick post here.  There is a really nice article about small cheese makers and their microbiology work in the New York Times by Larissa Zimberoff. The laboratory at Jasper Hill Farm in Vermont is part of a new effort by American producers to better understand the microbial players in their craft. Source: Small Cheese …

Genomes of eight bacteria from the built environment

We just published an extended genome report from eight bacteria that were sequenced as part of the “Built Environment Reference Genome” (BERG) project. BERG is a microBEnet run effort to increase the number of reference genomes in the Built Environment (BE) by offering free genome sequencing to a number of labs working in the field. …