Evaluating the impacts of synthetic and natural indoor surface finishes on the microbiome

The Sloan Foundation gave me one more thing to be grateful for this Thanksgiving: a grant to evaluate the impacts of different surface finishes on the indoor microbiome. My previous work identified a relationship between antimicrobial chemicals and antibiotic resistance genes in dust.  This new project will build upon these results using an experimental system to …

Assessing biochemical activity and metagenomic codes to a “T”

We’re recruiting a student/postdoc for this project! If it sounds interesting, please contact the Huttenhower Lab! We were happy to hear that we’ve been funded by the Sloan Foundation to continue our study of microbes on the Boston subway. Our original study involved 1) identifying which microbes were resident in this built environment, 2) understanding …

New Sloan Funded Project: The MoBE 2017 Research and Applications Symposium

We received the announcement today that the MoBE 2017 Symposium, chaired by Lynn Schriml at the University of Maryland School of Medicine, Institute for Genome Sciences, has been funded by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation’s program in the Microbiology of the Built Environment. MoBE 2017 will be co-sponsored by and held at the National Academy …

Emory University Legionella Workshop Session Videos Now Available Online

Proceedings of the Emory University’s May 2016 workshop on Legionella are now available online through the Emory Center for Public Health Preparedness and Research’s website (here) or on YouTube via Emory University’s official YouTube channel (here). Held on May 25 – 26, 2016 in Atlanta, GA, the workshop entitled “From Watersheds to Shower heads: A Workshop on Legionella” …

Dual postdoctoral fellowship opportunity to study the microbiology of the #ISS

This is so awesome. The Sloan Program in Microbiology of the Built Environment is offering a pair of postdoc fellowships to work on the microbiology of the International Space Station. Summary of the call is below, the compete information packet can be downloaded here.  And if that’s not cool enough, the next blog post is …

Calling all future MoBE post docs- application deadline Sept 1, 2016

Just wanted to remind everyone that the deadline for postdoctoral fellowship applications through the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation funded Microbiology of the Built Environment (MoBE) program is September 1, 2016. The program provides support for postdoctoral researchers in laboratories currently engaged in research in the U.S. or Canada. Three awards of $120,000 each will be made in …

Fungi and bacteria grow in carpet at elevated relative humidity

Floor dust is an important source of human exposure to microbes due to dust resuspension, especially from carpeted floors. Sources of microbes in floor dust are known to include outdoor air, tracked-in soil, growth on materials, and shedding from occupants or pets, but we wanted to know if growth may also contribute to these microbial …

Twitter chat on “Microbiology of Built Environments” AAM report Thu May 19 10-11 AM EST

There will be a Twitter chat on Thursday of relevance. Thursday May 19 10-11 AM EST Run by @ASMicrobiology. Follow this hashtag #ASMChats   Twitter chat Thu 10-11 AM EST run by @ASMicrobiology re: AAM report on Microbes & Built Environment https://t.co/UgzrheJcWM #ASMChats – Jonathan Eisen (@phylogenomics) May 17, 2016 //platform.twitter.com/widgets.js And an upcoming twitter …