Inaugural Forsyth Symposium Featuring the Uncultivable Bacteria Oct 11-12, 2018

Got details of this symposium by email: www.forsyth.org/forsyth-symposium Dear Friends and Colleagues, Forsyth is having a Fall Symposium on the “Uncultivable Bacteria” October 11-12, 2018.  We have an excellent set of Featured Speakers: Jill Banfield –Bacteria of the Candidate Phyla Radiation Floyd Dewhirst –Successful Cultivation Strategy for Saccharibacteria members of the Candidate Phyla Radiation Angela Douglas …

One last call for help with Sloan-funded MoBE paper collection

Back in September we posted a call for help with our “comprehensive” database of publications resulting from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation program in the Microbiology of the Built Environment.   We’ve tried database scanning, begging people for help, public posting, manually digging through Google Scholar, grant reports, etc.  Our hope is to use this collection …

Paper of possible interest: KatharoSeq Enables High-Throughput Microbiome Analysis from Low-Biomass Samples

This may be of interest to people out there.  Source: KatharoSeq Enables High-Throughput Microbiome Analysis from Low-Biomass Samples | mSystems Abstract: Microbiome analyses of low-biomass samples are challenging because of contamination and inefficiencies, leading many investigators to employ low-throughput methods with minimal controls. We developed a new automated protocol, KatharoSeq (from the Greek katharos [clean]), …

The attempt to find “best practice” for 16S studies

I entered the world of 16S rRNA gene metabarcoding as a naïve PhD student around five years ago. Like many people, I had hoped that there would have been others before me that had beaten the path and could guide me through the many pitfalls of this experimental approach. How wrong I was! I became …

Worth a look: Filter forensics: microbiota recovery from residential HVAC filters

This is worth a look: Filter forensics: microbiota recovery from residential HVAC filters | Microbiome | Full Text From the paper Background Establishing reliable methods for assessing the microbiome within the built environment is critical for understanding the impact of biological exposures on human health. High-throughput DNA sequencing of dust samples provides valuable insights into …

New paper: Taxonomic annotation of public fungal ITS sequences from the built environment – a report from an April 10–11, 2017 workshop (Aberdeen, UK)

The report (and the data) from our Sloan-funded taxonomic annotation workshop on fungi in the built environment was just published in MycoKeys: https://mycokeys.pensoft.net/article/20887/list/4/ Abstract Recent DNA-based studies have shown that the built environment is surprisingly rich in fungi. These indoor fungi – whether transient visitors or more persistent residents – may hold clues to the rising …

Taxonomic annotation of public fungal ITS sequences from the built environment – a report from an April 10–11, 2017 workshop (Aberdeen, UK)

The report (and the data) from our Sloan-funded taxonomic annotation workshop on fungi in the built environment was just published in MycoKeys: https://mycokeys.pensoft.net/article/20887/list/4/ Abstract Recent DNA-based studies have shown that the built environment is surprisingly rich in fungi. These indoor fungi – whether transient visitors or more persistent residents – may hold clues to the rising …

Our #ISS Microbiome Paper in PeerJ

So a number of years ago our lab embarked on Project MERCCURI (let’s not talk about the tortured acronym).  This complex and citizen science-based collaboration (website here) has been a fascinating journey.  It’s ranged from getting to watch a rocket launch in Florida, to discovering/describing a new bacterial species, to our most recent publication… the …