Backyard chicken coops are on the rise and in many ways that is a good thing. However, one negative with this is that some chickens can carry various microbes that can make people sick and sometimes those microbes get to people and make them sick. CNN has a new story on the topic that may …
I recently spent a weekend visiting a friend out of state and quickly came to realize that he rarely washed his hands. Before eating? No. After the gym? No. Even after going to the bathroom…and not just urination. No washing! I was disgusted and could not convince him of the same. How could an educated …
Fascinating, scary and really important read from Maryn McKenna in Wired: The Strange and Curious Case of the Deadly Superbug Yeast By the normal standards of outbreak, Candida auris signals a mind-bending shift—and it’s forcing researchers draw on some of medicine’s oldest practices to rethink treatment. The article tells the tale of Candida auris a fungus that …
This new #OpenAccess paper may be of interest to those out there thinking about microbes in the built environment. : Luhung I, Wu Y, Xu S, Yamamoto N, Wei-Chung Chang V, Nazaroff WW (2018) Exploring temporal patterns of bacterial and fungal DNA accumulation on a ventilation system filter for a Singapore university library. PLoS ONE …
Question of the day. Where do we draw the line in terms of privacy when sampling sewer systems? I have had some major concerns about microbiome studies using sewer system samples in the past. And of course people are trying to use sewer system studies to look at all sorts of other epidemiology related data. …
Just a quick post here pointing people to some new papers of potential interest. The papers in are mBio and are from Ian Lipkin’s lab (with others) on bacteria and viruses in mice in New York City papers in mBio Viral Diversity of House Mice in New York City mBio 9:2 march/april 2018; doi:10.1128/mBio.01354-17 New York …
New paper of interest:: Genomic Analysis of Hospital Plumbing Reveals Diverse Reservoir of Bacterial Plasmids Conferring Carbapenem Resistance Weingarten RA, Johnson RC, Conlan S, Ramsburg AM, Dekker JP, Lau AF, Khil P, Odom RT, Deming C, Park M, Thomas PJ, NISC Comparative Sequencing Program, Henderson DK, Palmore TN, Segre JA, Frank KM. 2018. Genomic analysis …
This may be of interest to people out there. Source: KatharoSeq Enables High-Throughput Microbiome Analysis from Low-Biomass Samples | mSystems Abstract: Microbiome analyses of low-biomass samples are challenging because of contamination and inefficiencies, leading many investigators to employ low-throughput methods with minimal controls. We developed a new automated protocol, KatharoSeq (from the Greek katharos [clean]), …
Paper of possible interest: Hong, P.-Y.; Julian, T.R.; Pype, M.-L.; Jiang, S.C.; Nelson, K.L.; Graham, D.; Pruden, A.; Manaia, C.M. Reusing Treated Wastewater: Consideration of the Safety Aspects Associated with Antibiotic-Resistant Bacteria and Antibiotic Resistance Genes. Water 2018, 10, 244. Abstract: As more countries engage in water reuse, either intended or de facto, there is …
There is a new paper out of possible interest. Source: Stagaman K, Cepon-Robins TJ, Liebert MA, Gildner TE, Urlacher SS, Madimenos FC, Guillemin K, Snodgrass JJ, Sugiyama LS, Bohannan BJM. 2018. Market integration predicts human gut microbiome attributes across a gradient of economic development. mSystems 3:e00122-17. https://doi.org/10.1128/mSystems.00122-17. Abstract: Economic development is marked by dramatic …