Microbes and buildings The Microbiome of Green Design: Sustainable building practices may have unforeseen consequences for microbial communities and human health – Carolyn Beans – BioScience ($40 for 1 day) Just as our bodies teem with microbial life, so, too, do the homes, offices, schools, and other indoor spaces where we spend the majority of our …
First up today was Rachel Dutton talking about “Horizontal gene transfer in Cheese”. She began by talking about cheese as a great model system for understanding the principles behind microbial community formation. Many replicates, controlled conditions, manipulable etc. After doing initial 16S/ITS survey they cultured representatives of all the dominant genera in the cheeses and …
Every two years a bunch of microbial ecology and microbial genomics folks descend upon the UCLA Lake Arrowhead center for a fabulous conference. See this search result for numerous posts here at microBEnet about the meetings past. This year (as in 2012) there is a session on the Microbiology of the Built Environment. But that’s …
This is so awesome. The Sloan Program in Microbiology of the Built Environment is offering a pair of postdoc fellowships to work on the microbiology of the International Space Station. Summary of the call is below, the compete information packet can be downloaded here. And if that’s not cool enough, the next blog post is …
OK so I love Komodo dragons. I love microbes and microbiomes. And I am an editor at mSystems. So yes I am biased in all sorts of ways about this paper. So with that caveat – I think this is definitely worth a look: The Oral and Skin Microbiomes of Captive Komodo Dragons Are Significantly Shared …
New research findings have provided helpful conclusions to help you become a more conscientious consumer of eggs. As summarized in this news article, findings related to animal health, consumer health, worker health, environmental impact, and affordability are outlined. The three housing types they looked at were battery cages, enriched colony housing (arguably more humane than …
Quick post – paper of interest: Urban greenness influences airborne bacterial community composition Abstract Urban green space provides health benefits for city dwellers, and new evidence suggests that microorganisms associated with soil and vegetation could play a role. While airborne microorganisms are ubiquitous in urban areas, the influence of nearby vegetation on airborne microbial communities …
There is a really nice new paper out in mSystems (full disclosure – I am on the Board of Editors of the journal). The paper is from Brent Stephens and sums up a recent presentation of his. See What Have We Learned about the Microbiomes of Indoor Environments? Abstract: The advent and application of high-throughput …
Microbes in the clinic Glove Contamination during Endodontic Treatment Is One of the Sources of Nosocomial Endodontic Propionibacterium acnes Infections – Sadia Ambreen Niazi – Journal of Endodontics ($35.95) The opportunistic Propionibacterium acnes recovered frequently from failed endodontic treatments might be the result of nosocomial endodontic infections. The study was aimed to determine if gloves …
Microbes and the built environment sensu stricto This short review in Trends in Microbiology is open access, very relevant for this blog, and received quite some press. Review: Buildings, Beneficial Microbes, and Health – Jordan Peccia, Sarah E. Kwan – Trends in Microbiology (OA) Bacteria and fungi in buildings exert an influence on the human …