US news just published an article, Disinfectants Can’t Defeat Salmonella in Food-Processing Plants: Study, discussing the inability of currently used disinfectants to eradicate or even reduce viable counts of Salmonella. The full article, Commonly used disinfectants fail to eradicate Salmonella enterica biofilm from food contact surface materials, is located behind a paywall in the Journal of Applied and Environmental Microbiology …
Just discovered this report: BEACON eSpace at Jet Propulsion Laboratory: Genetic inventory task final report. It is a summary of genetic studies of microbes found on various spacecraft and associated facilities. Abstract: Contaminant terrestrial microbiota could profoundly impact the scientific integrity of extraterrestrial life-detection experiments. It is therefore important to know what organisms persist on spacecraft …
Sequencing of PCR-amplified marker regions (e.g. 16S, ITS) for characterization of sample microbial ecology is a widely-used tool in Microbiology of the Built Environmenta (MoBE) investigations. Due to the large amount of data produced by these methods, sequences are typically clustered into operational taxonomic units (OTUs) based on sequence similarity to simplify downstream processing. However, …
New paper out of possible interest to those studying the microbiology of the built environment: Frontiers | Beneficial effects of plant-associated microbes on indoor microbiomes and human health? | Frontiers in Plant-Microbe Interaction. The paper makes some arguments regarding possible connections between indoor plant microbiomes and human health. I am posting this here without commentary in …
Interested in learning more about air sampling in the built environment? Then check out the Google Hangout with several researchers on the topic posted on microBEnet. Interested in even more detail? Then check out the EPA report entitled “Determination of the Sampling Efficiency of Biosamplers to Collect Inhalable Particles”
A conference organized by the European Commission on the European antimicrobial resistance (AMR) five year action plan and its future challenges is taking place in Brussels today, 11 December. The conference is intended to provide a platform to discuss this action plan at the mid-stage of its implementation, looking at the issue both from a …
Well, I have always told people that we need more mixing of art and science. In recent years we have seen lots of attempts to do some sort of art inspired by – or even incorporating – microbes. But this is perhaps the other side of the coin. Art is significantly influenced by microbes in …
For those doing microbial diversity studies, analysis of rRNA genes via PCR is still a fundamental tool. And thankfully many people keep maintaining various databases and tools for people to use to carry out analysis of rRNA data. Here are some new papers of relevance: The SILVA and “All-species Living Tree Project (LTP)” taxonomic frameworks. …
Nice new paper from Karen Dannemiller et al. (the senior author is Jordan Peccia from Yale): Citation: Dannemiller, K. C., Lang-Yona, N., Yamamoto, N., Rudich, Y., & Peccia, J. (2013). Combining Real-Time PCR and Next-Generation DNA Sequencing to Provide Quantitative Comparisons of Fungal Aerosol Populations. Atmospheric Environment in Press. The abstract is copied below. Basically, they …
New paper out from the microbiology of the built environment community: MIxS-BE: a MIxS extension defining a minimum information standard for sequence data from the built environment. The joint first authors are Elizabeth Glass and Yekaterina Dribinsky. And the senior author is Lynn Schriml. The paper is simple but I think very important – it describes …