On April 11 there was a meeting in Washington DC that was part of an effort from a new study being conducted by the National Academies of Science, Medicine, and Engineering on “Microbiomes of the Built Environment”. Videos and slides from the meeting have now been posted. I have compiled them below. In addition, I …
Just a quick update on the water crisis in Flint, Michigan. The NY Times has this article out on the impending legal battle to deal with how the situation was mishandled. 13 felonies and 5 misdemeanors were lodged against state officials Busch, Prysby, and Glasgow. Gov. Snyder also faces an effort to recall him from …
These will almost certainly be of interest to the MoBE community. There is a new paper in mSystems “Geography and Location Are the Primary Drivers of Office Microbiome Composition” by John Chase, Jennifer Fouquier, Mahnaz Zare, Derek L. Sonderegger, Rob Knight, Scott T. Kelley, Jeffrey Siegel, J. Gregory Caporaso. I found out about the paper via …
I always looks forward to spending a chunk of my Friday listening to Science Friday. This segment is too good not to share… Science Club is back! Ariel Zych and Charles Bergquist, the awesome Science Club hosts, are celebrating National Citizen Science Day (April 16) with a new Science Club they are calling #TakeASample. This is awesome challenge …
New papers on the intersection of human activities and microbes, selected from my daily MicrobiomeDigest blog. Microbes in the house Generation and Characterization of Indoor Fungal Aerosols for Inhalation Studies – Anne Mette Madsen – Applied and Environmental Microbiology (OA) (…) The aim of this study was to develop an inhalation exposure system to be able to examine …
In the wake of the Obama administration’s plan to decrease antibiotic usage in livestock, farmers are now trying to find alternatives that have fewer ecological and human health impacts. In an effort to reduce reliance on antibiotics, researchers at Iowa State University are testing if Lactobacillus species found in yogurt might have a similar health effect on livestock as …
So – I am teaching in BIS002C – Biodiversity and the Tree of Life again at UC Davis. And I thought it might be of interest to share (and get feedback on) some of what I am teaching for this course. Quick summary – this is the third course in an Intro Bio series …
What is better than Open Access?! Citizen Science AND Open Access! The March issue of JMBE was all that. You have probably already heard of Kittybiome and/or The Koala Project, 2 ongoing projects in the Eisen Lab. Both projects were featured in the paper, “Crowdfunding Campaigns Help Researchers Launch Projects and Generate Outreach”, published in …
For the last few years our lab has been really excited about the idea of having undergraduates culture bacterial isolates and sequence their genomes. Starting with the Undergraduate Built Environment Genomes Project in 2011, we went on to re-write and upgrade the assembly pipeline that we use, followed by the publication of the “Swabs to …
We are kicking off planning for a two day fall 2017 MoBE meeting in Washington, DC to promote and celebrate the scientific achievements of the MoBE project. The MoBE 2017 meeting will engage the broader research and governmental community to champion the scientific endeavors of the MoBE program, highlighting scientific achievements and novel understandings gained …