After reading this story today about Serratia marcescens I thought it would be interesting to have the occasional post highlighting a particular organism found in the built environment. Sort of like a baseball card collection of microbes. Name: Serratia marcescens Location: commonly found in showers, toilets, tiles etc. Fairly ubiquitous in damp environments. Description: rod-shaped, …
New video from Institute of Medicine on “What you need to know about infectious disease” which is useful and fortunately includes some information about things other than infectious diseases. It is based on this booklet. I note – it is heavy on those with apparent XY chromosome status, but maybe next time they will include …
We’ve posted a couple of times in the past about the large collection of papers we’ve assembled on Mendeley relating to the microbiology of the built environment. See here and here. Because the utility of a large collection is in part dependent on the organization and tagging, we’ve created a couple of short tutorial videos …
When I think of things that problematically attach themselves the bottom of boats, I usually think of barnacles. But bacterial biofilms can also be a problem, and can make the substrate more attractive to larger organisms. I saw an interesting story today on work focused on developing anti-fouling systems that aren’t toxic to the environment. …
We should have a recurring series on overblown stories about the microbiology of the built environment, particularly on findings that “X” common item harbors bacteria that might kill you. So far in this vein we’ve discussed dishwashers, money, fast-food playgrounds, hospital curtains, HVAC systems, hospital scrubs, and pillows. Some of these are good stories, but …
Every time we see Norm Pace we get reminded that the “built environment” doesn’t just include buildings. In particular, he points out there isn’t a lot of attention paid to the massive, understudied, and deteriorating water infrastructure in the U.S. Today I saw an interesting article about the survival of norovirus in groundwater. Norovirus is …
When I first heard about the 5-story biowall at Drexel University I was impressed. I’d often heard that plants help clean indoor air and it seemed that having a large experimental setup like this would be great. Just to briefly summarize, this wall features 12 kinds of plants, all growing hydroponically on a giant mesh. …
Ever heard any of these “microbial myths”? “Microbes are all bad” “The only good microbe is a dead microbe” “E. coli bacteria (or any other microbe) are all the same” “The biggest health concern in buildings is mold” “Microbes in the built environment affect everyone the same way” Then check out our new microbial myth …
Viruses often tend to be overlooked in microbiological surveys of the built environment. This is because they don’t show up in either culture-based methods (which are specific to bacteria or fungi) or the commonly employed newer technique of ribosomal RNA sequencing (because viruses don’t have ribosomes). Even in metagenomic analyses where viral sequences are present …
This story isn’t so much about the microbiology of the built environment… it’s more about the effect of the built environment on microbiology. A group of researchers from various institutions recently examined the effects of new road construction on the dispersal of antibiotic-resistant bacteria (E. coli in this case). While perhaps not surprising that the …