Just a quick journal club post here, got pointed to this really interesting sounding article by David Thaler recently “Microwave detection and quantification of water hidden in and on building materials: implications for healthy buildings and microbiome studies.” As I understand the problem, it can be hard to quantify water in buildings, particularly water hidden …
So just a quick post about this new paper “Evaluation of Acquired Antibiotic Resistance in Escherichia coli Exposed to Long-Term Low-Shear Modeled Microgravity and Background Antibiotic Exposure“. Seems pretty straightforward… 1000 generations of E. coli in simulated microgravity… expose them to antibiotics and study the development of resistance. This is in contrast to some previous …
This is really cool. Or, actually, really hot. A new paper is out from Regina L. Wilpiszeski, Zhidan Zhang, and Christopher H. House at Penn State on their cool (oops again, hot) Citizen Microbiology project on microbes in water heaters. See the paper here Biogeography of thermophiles and predominance of Thermus scotoductus in domestic water heaters | …
Just posting some Tweets here … I really recommend people check out this paper. There is a new paper from @rblauste @ericamhartmann et al. that is a must read on microbes on the space station – see PR here https://t.co/Wi2vIUVTT5 from @NorthwesternU and paper here from @mSystemsJ https://t.co/cpD926urKD 1/n — Jonathan Eisen (@phylogenomics) January 9, …
A few days ago I posted the first few lines of an adaptation of a poem: The love song of J. Romaine Lettuce: Lettuce go then, E. coli, While evenly spread out your counts are high Make a patient etherized upon a table; Lettuce go, through certain half-soiled sheets, The muttering retweets … I did …
Completely fascinating, and a wee bit terrifying new paper worth a read:: Ecological Analyses of Mycobacteria in Showerhead Biofilms and Their Relevance to Human Health Abstract: Bacteria within the genus Mycobacterium can be abundant in showerheads, and the inhalation of aerosolized mycobacteria while showering has been implicated as a mode of transmission in nontuberculous mycobacterial …
Source: Opinion | Discovering the Great Indoors Definitely worth checking out this opinion piece in the NY Times bye Rob Dunn on “Discovering the Great Indoors”. It has a bit about Van Leeuwenhoek, and bits about fungi and lice and bacteria and tardigrades and foldscope and more. Rob Dunn is really one of the great …
Just got this e-mail regarding an upcoming NASEM Webinar “Microbiome, Wastewater Treatment, and Antibiotic Resistance” on 9/25/18. Here’s the description of the event: In 2017, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine released the report, Microbiomes of the Built Environment: A Research Agenda for Indoor Microbiology, Human Health, and Buildings. The report highlights the importance …
I’m torn between wanting to ignore this story and wanting to attack the media reports on the study. I think I’ll compromise on a minimum set of complaints. Firstly, the paper itself (“Deposition of respiratory virus pathogens on frequently touched surfaces at airports“) is more or less fine. The authors used real-time PCR to look …
Just got pointed to a description of this 1-day meeting in New York on October 12, 2018… “It’s a Brave New World: Applications, Promise and Public Implications of Metagenomics in Urban Settings”. Sounds like a great lineup of speakers and certainly a fascinating topic! Meeting description below: This 1-day symposium brings together urban microbiome …