Next week, the Lublin University of Technology in Lublin, Poland will host the Healthy Buildings Europe conference. Over 300 scientists, engineers, and professionals will gather to present and discuss building science. The Sloan Foundation is sponsoring workshops at the meeting to bring together leaders in the field and advance the state of the science. A …
There is a news story of interest from a few weeks ago in the NY Times: Are Pets the New Probiotic? – The New York Times It discusses the concept and some of the research on how animals and their microbiomes could in some cases play a role in shaping the human immune system and human …
Microbes indoors DNA metabarcoding to assess indoor fungal communities: Electrostatic dust collectors and Illumina sequencing – Steffi Rocchi – Journal of Microbiological Methods ($39.95) Our study aimed to evaluate metabarcoding and bioinformatic analysis resulting from calibrated samples and samples collected by an electrostatic dust collector (EDC) in dwellings with no moisture problems. Thus, the fungal communities of …
Sorry for the headline here but when I saw this news story (British scientists survey infectious bacteria by having people walk outside in socks – The Washington Post). I just could not get Mr. Rogers’ “Who are the people in your neighborhood” out of my head. But with the “people” replaced by “microbes”. Why did this …
OK I could not help it with the alliteration, since I just had to top the headline in the NY Times. Source: Dogs Do Their Duty for Science – The New York Times The article is about the work of Jane Carlton (full disclosure – I used to work with her at TIGR) and their …
Here at microBEnet we have been trying to help build up the field of “microbiology of the built environment.” Understandably, a lot of the focus of this field has been on human built environments and humans in such built environments. I (and clearly many others) believe that we can learn a lot by expanding this to …
This paper may be of interest to some. Basically, the authors compared Salmonella levels in outdoor vs. indoor housing for chickens. The main push behind this appears to be the growing trend for having more outdoor housing for chickens and the question of whether or not that leads to higher levels of pathogens. See …
Not really sure what to think about this article: Ants as Vectors of Bacteria in Hospital Environments. Published in the Journal of Microbiology Research and authored by Bruna Rafaela Machado Oliveira, Luciano Ferreira de Sousa, Raquel Chalá Soares, Thiago César Nascimento, Marcelo Silva Madureira, Jorge Luiz Fortuna. In a quick scan the science seems reasonable. …
Quick post here: Of possible interest: Microbiome sharing between children, livestock and household surfaces in western Kenya in PLOS One. Abstract below The gut microbiome community structure and development are associated with several health outcomes in young children. To determine the household influences of gut microbiome structure, we assessed microbial sharing within households in western Kenya …
Just a quick post here. This is an interesting paper on how genotype of Drosophila influences their microbiome. As a side story – I think flies could become an interesting and useful model for studying how the built environment (e.g., vials, cages, food, etc) influence microbiomes. Host genotype can influence the composition of the commensal …