Lots and lots of news stories about the BioBE center and some of their recent work on “microbiomes of classrooms”. Here is a collection of links: Their paper in the new journal “Microbiome”: microbiota in the classroom University of Oregon story: UO center on quest to document indoor microbes, guide healthier buildings | Around the O. Who’s …
From the BioBE Center … What sorts of bacteria did we find in a university classroom? from BioBE Center on Vimeo.
This interesting review article from 2012 bridges clinical Microbiology and the study of the built environment. Authors Borkow and Monk discuss various sources of nosocomial infections (NI) and a potential solution to the problem. Despite rigorous efforts to sterilize and sanitize hospitals, NI are persistent and pose a serious threat to patients who are already …
I asked the Twittersphere last week for suggestions for hashtags to use for Tweets about microbiology of the built environment Here are some of the answers [View the story “Hashtags for microbiology of the built environment” on Storify] UPDATE: March 25, 2018 Since Storify is disappearing soon we converted the Storify into a “Wakelet” and …
Illustration (from OpenScar.com) an explanation of the beginning of the spread of SARS in Hong Kong’s Amoy Gardens apartment complex where the index case was in a building 60 meters away from a building where about 45% of the 300 infected individuals at Amoy Gardens lived. Many of the other infected individuals also lived in …
When the average person hears the terms “microbiology” and “genetics,” often mental images involving lab coats, complicated chemical reactions, forensic TV shows, and futuristic advancements come to mind. However, just this week, a team of scientists at the University of York published a paper in “Nature Genetics” (Christina Warinner et al, Pathogens and host immunity in …
Just finished reading this review article preprint on PeerJ by Major Ben Kirkup from the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research. Called “Counterinsurgency Doctrine Applied to Infectious Disease” this article reviews the existing literature on the human microbiome, gives some background on military counterinsurgency doctrine, and then applies insights from the latter to the former. …
While searching for news about microbes in the built environment I stumbled across these fascinating photographs (electron micrographs) of symbiotic termite gut microbes. Taken with a scanning electron microscope by Kevin J. Carpenter a biologist/microscopist/photographer (and fellow Davis alum!), they just finished an exhibit at the Beaty Biodiversity Museum in January, after being displayed in …
The 2012, Deepwater Horizon oil rig explosion more commonly known as the BP oil spill produced drastic changes in microbial communities, some of which contributed to bioremediation of the areas affected by the spill. According to a recent article (2013) in Environmental Science and Technology, succession of several microbial communities, particularly hydrocarbon-metabolizing bacteria of the …
You can download the database of over 360 publications that report characteristics of the indoor environment along with the microbes found in the studies. Each publication is entered as a record and includes citation, abstract, keywords, organisms, substrates, and environmental conditions as reported by the authors. The database in MS Access format is searchable for …