Some recent papers and news articles from my daily blog MicrobiomeDigest. Not all are Open Access, but they are worth mentioning here too. Indoor air bacterial communities in Hong Kong households assemble independently of occupant skin microbiomes – David Wilkins – Environmental Microbiology While indoor air and dust are known to also contain many human-associated taxa, household air …
A nice article by Robert Lee Hotz in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal called “Designing a Hospital to Better Fight Infection“. The article summarizes data from the 3-year Hospital Microbiome Project, funded by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation in New York. and quotes Emily Landon, Julie Segre, James Meadow, Jack Gilbert, and Jessica Green. From the article: …
Here’s a summary of the conference: Join your colleagues from around the world to participate in platform and poster presentations, symposia, and plenary lectures which highlight the latest advances in aerosol science and technology! Special symposia this year will address the following topics: Primary and Secondary Aerosols from Agricultural Operations; The Role of Water in …
Well, as with some other recent posts here, the paper I am writing about is not open access and I do not have any obvious way to get it at this time. But it looks interesting, and more importantly it shows just how many places are thinking about microbial ecology in built environments. The paper …
Well this certainly seems of interest to the microBEnet audience Ann Med. 2015 Apr 23:1-8. Helsinki alert of biodiversity and health. Alas the paper is an absurd $52 to access for 24 hours. So all I have is the abstract, which certainly seems interesting: Urban living in built environments, combined with the use of processed water …
Appropriate song to play while reading this post: Doctor! Doctor! – Thompson Twins Despite the many hours we spend inside homes, offices, and other buildings, we still know very little about the microorganisms that live inside these walls. Health-care facilities are very important in this respect, because the humans inside these buildings are often immunocompromised: they are …
There are few constants in this world. One exception, however, is the passing of day to night, which has gone on without fail since life first emerged on Earth. Early life quickly learned to anticipate changes associated with light and dark. This ability to tell time – to peer into the immediate future – was …
There is an interesting and potentially very useful paper just out: Optimized DNA extraction and metagenomic sequencing of airborne microbial communities A brief summary from the journal: This protocol enables collection of airborne particulate matter; and after sample pretreatment, it allows sufficient quantities of microbial DNA to be extracted and prepared for downstream applications such …
Just heading back (on the train) from the Association of Health Care Journalists 2015 which was in Santa Clara, where I participated in a session on The Microbiome. The session participants: Jonathan Eisen, Ph.D., professor, School of Medicine and College of Biological Sciences, University of California Susan Lynch, Ph.D., associate professor of medicine, University of California, …
Get ready for a microbiome and metagenome festival in NYC! We are excited to announce the first international summit on metagenomics and metadesign of subways and urban biomes (MetaSUB), held in New York City (NYC) on June 20, 2015, at the New York Genome Center (NYGC). This will be held right after a related meeting at …