Today was an exciting day in the microbiology world with the launch of the White House OSTP National Microbiome Initiative in Washington, where the Who Is Who of microbiome research was gathered. Too bad I was not there! But I’ve compiled another set of nice papers and news articles on the microbiology of the built environment. Microbes in the City …
During the winter term at University of Oregon, I led a design-oriented microbiome course for graduate and undergraduate students from a variety of disciplines (Architecture, Environmental Studies, Landscape Architecture, and Planning). Just for the record, these design students were VERY enthusiastic to learn about microbiome science, although they were somewhat disconcerted to find out how …
Two reviews came out recently by Mutius et al and Smits et al discussing the link between microbes and asthma. Sadly, they are not open access. Both reviews suggest that exposure to microbially rich environments helps build the immune response and inflammation systems. The Mutius et al paper drew from research conducted on urban environmental microbiology using DNA fingerprinting to characterize indoor …
The 4th International Conference on Responsible Use of Antibiotics in Animals is scheduled for 26-28 September in the Hague, the Netherlands. This is an important and timely topic with federal regulations changing current agricultural practices. Here is some information from the conference website: Antibiotics are used worldwide both in veterinary and human medicine. The widespread …
A recent Slate article by Jonathan Katz talks about a map that is displayed at the CDC – as well as the heavy implications of this map. Despite genomic evidence that the UN peacekeepers were the source of cholera in earthquake-devastated Haiti, the CDC and the UN continue to avoid accountability. UN peacekeepers from Nepal failed to set up …
Last week, Melissa Dsouza and Jack Gilbert at the University of Chicago hosted a Sloan sponsored MoBE Early Career Workshop. I had the pleasure of attending this well organized event and was inspired by this highly intelligent and motivated group of scientists. The future for the MoBE is bright indeed if these scientists are able to find jobs …
An open access article entitled “Evaluation of disinfection efficiency in pet’s hospital by using chlorine dioxide” was recently published in Sustainable Environment Research. In this study, the authors investigated the efficacy of chlorine dioxide in reducing the concentration of bacteria and fungi in bioaerosols in an animal hospital. Chlorine dioxide is an effective disinfectant commonly …
(This blog post was written by group #1 as a writing assignment. See their first post here. Note that much of what the students did in this class is taken directly from the Swabs to Genomes paper which contains relevant links and references) This week in class, our goal was to create a phylogenetic tree …
(this post was written by group #4 as a writing assignment) With a minor setback from last week’s inability to efficiently wash and quantify the amplified DNA, we came back this week with a stronger mindset to pick ourselves back up and turn our failures into a positive. At the start of this week’s class, …
The six finalists for the Open Science Prize were announced today. The Open Science Prize is “The Open Science Prize is a collaboration between the Wellcome Trust, the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute to unleash the power of open content and data to advance biomedical research and its …