Blog post prepared jointly by Andrew Doxey (@acdoxey) and Josh Neufeld (@joshdneufeld) The “aquariome” Back in 2013, as part of a project assessing aquarium microbial communities and their role in nutrient cycling, Laura Sauder (graduate student in the Neufeld lab) sequenced a shotgun metagenomic library from a freshwater aquarium biofilter that was installed on this …
As buildings move forward in an attempt to become more “green,” it is important to continue to assess how the microbiology changes with these new systems. A recent study from Keely et al used high-throughput pyrosequencing to look at what microbes live in the different points in grey water systems. The sampling efforts were split into …
We expect people next door to be good citizens and would like to meet them before moving in. When it comes to the neighbors living in our tap water, precaution is especially in order. In the “Microbial Neighbors in your Tap Water” series, our PLoS ONE paper released today introduces these invisible neighbors- the building …
Apologies for the late notice on this .. but this may be of interest. Got this announcement a few days ago: Colleagues — Preceding this January’s EMBO Symposium on Aquatic Microeukaryotes in Heidelberg (January 26—29, 2016), the Marine Microbiology Initiative (MMI) is sponsoring a small two-day Summit for up to 24 postdoctoral fellows and advanced graduate …
Just got sent this by Katherine Bowman from the Board on Life Sciences. This is really important and if you know of someone who would be good please consider nominating them. Request for Committee Nominations — Microbiomes of the Built Environment: From Research to Application The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine are …
I have just discovered a nice microbiology themed podcast from the Society for General Microbiology. The podcast is linked to the “Microbe Post” blog and is called “Microbe Talk Extra”. Here is the most recent one on antimicrobials in water and the environment.
There is an interesting and potentially important new paper out from Caitlin Proctor, Marc Edwards and Amy Pruden: Microbial composition of purified waters and implications for regrowth control in municipal water systems in Environmental Science: Water Research & Technology. The abstract is below:
A recent New York Times article by Katie Rogers talks about an odd solution to California’s dwindling water supply. LA county is using small black balls that float on the surface of reservoir water to block UV and heat. This prevents both evaporation and algae growth from occurring. With California’s drought persistently eating away at our …
Here is your song to go with this post: Something in the water by Carrie Underwood. When we drink tap water, we usually don’t really think about the bacteria that might be in there. The quality of drinking water in the US is regulated by Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and monitored by regularly testing the water …
This article on the website of Michigan Radio had an intriguing title. Detective work traces bacteria in Michigan rivers back to leaky septic tanks – Rebecca Williams – Michigan Radio This is a nice story illustrating how the detection of marker bacteria can be used to track contamination of rivers and other environments with fecal matter, …