Some important reading for those interested in microbiomes. NSF’s mission is to advance the progress of science, a mission accomplished by funding proposals for research and education made by scientists, engineers, and educators from across the country. From NSF: A group of 23 U.S. government agencies, including the National Science Foundation (NSF), have joined to …
This should be of interest to many: mSystems has a whole issue dedicated to essays by “Early-Career Systems Microbiology Scientists”. Early-Career Systems Microbiology Scientists Jack A. Gilbert mSystems March/April 2018 3:e00002-18; doi:10.1128/mSystems.00002-18 http://msystems.asm.org/content/3/2/e00002-18 Conflict of Interest Declarations by Contributing Editors of the Special Issue on Early-Career Systems Microbiology Scientists, Sponsored by Janssen Human Microbiome …
Conference announcement: The 7th Conference on Beneficial Microbes will be held at UW-Madison on July 8-11, 2018. The abstract submission deadline is May 2. https://uwmadison.eventsair.com/QuickEventWebsitePortal/BENEFICIALMICROBES/18 The conference was formerly the “ASM Conference on Beneficial Microbes,” with a long history of combining model and natural systems to understand the ecology and functions of host-associated microbes. When ASM …
(This is a blog post by Cinta Gomez-Silvan, the first author on this paper) Story behind the paper: A comparison of methods used to unveil the genetic and metabolic pool in the built environment. It seems pretty obvious that in the field of microbial ecology we need to understand how living microorganism interact. Nevertheless, …
Just came across this paper today from the University of Illinois, “Drinking water microbiome assembly induced by water stagnation“. Looks like a good study on actual residential tap water systems. Was also happy to see that the press release didn’t dip too much into scare-mongering. Worth a read by folks interested in water systems. Abstract …
I just got pointed to this article today “Ugly Ducklings – the dark side of plastic materials in contact with potable water“, along with the accompanying commentary “About duck, pipes, and microbiomes“. I think this is a fascinating study for a few reasons. Firstly, like probably most parents, I observed and wondered about the biofilms …
This could be of use to many people: Source: GraftM: a tool for scalable, phylogenetically informed classification of genes within metagenomes | Nucleic Acids Research | Oxford Academic Large-scale metagenomic datasets enable the recovery of hundreds of population genomes from environmental samples. However, these genomes do not typically represent the full diversity of complex microbial …
(Note: This post was updated on 3/26/18 after re-running some of our analysis based on suggestions in the comments and on Twitter). We were very excited to get our MinION sequencer from Nanopore 1.5 years ago… so many potential applications; sequencing in real time, use in the classroom, use in the field, not having to …
OK this is cool :This watercolour painting was created by artistic bacteria | WIRED UK Though not quite what the headline says. From the article With Park’s guidance, Roberts placed Serratia marcescens – a red pigmented bacteria – on to agar plates previously painted with watercolours. When coming into contact with the paint, the bacteria …
Just came across this paper on bioRXiv. A Measure of Open Data: A Metric and Analysis of Reusable Data Practices in Biomedical Data Resources by Seth Carbon, Robin Champieux, Julie McMurry, Lilly Winfree, Letisha R Wyatt, and Melissa Haendel Abstract Data is the foundation of science, and there is an increasing focus on how data can be reused …