Microbes indoors Building-related symptoms are linked to the in vitro toxicity of indoor dust and airborne microbial propagules in schools: A cross-sectional study – JT Salin – Environmental Research ($41.95) We examined whether the in vitro toxicity of indoor samples from school buildings was associated with work-related health symptoms (building-related symptoms, BRS). Administrators of the Helsinki …
Amidst the November/December holiday chaos, myself and co-authors were proud to witness the publication of a neat new paper focused on ATM keypads in New York City. Yes, just like all other surfaces in the Built Environment, those ATM keypads are harboring lots of microbes and bits of orphaned DNA! This ATM keypad study was work that …
Microbes in the city Microbial Community Patterns Associated with Automated Teller Machine Keypads in New York City – Holly M. Bik – mSphere (OA). News coverage at EurekAlert, ScienceDaily, and NYMagazine. (…) Here we carried out a baseline study of automated teller machine (ATM) keypads in New York City (NYC). Our goal was to describe …
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 …
Well, this is enormously big news: The FDA today banned the use of triclosan as an ingredient in antibacterial soaps, saying that such cleaners were no better than regular soap. Source: FDA bans antibacterial soaps containing triclosan Lots and lots and lots of other stories about this. See for example FDA announcement Washington Post NPR …
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 …
Back in September 2014 I was invited to write a book chapter on citizen science in microbiology. After several iterations of the book, the chapter, and the licensing agreement here is the final version. The book came out yesterday, here’s a link to the entire book on Amazon (“The Rightful Place of Science: Citizen Science“) …
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 …
The meeting page for the 21st Annual International Meeting on Microbial Genomes at Lake Arrowhead is now up. This has been one of my favorite meetings for many many years (full disclosure — I am now a co-organizer and have been for the last few meetings). Note — the meeting is NOT just about genomes — it …