Just saw a posting about this on Twitter by Simon Creer and thought it might be of interest. 4 year NERC freshwater eDNA PDRA now recruiting! Understanding the ecological relevance of eDNA in freshwater lotic ecosystems (NERC Highlight Topic funding) We are looking for a dynamic researcher to fulfil a leading role in a …
Here are some new papers of interest. Separate treatment of hospital and urban wastewaters: A real scale comparison of effluents and their effect on microbial communities – Teofana Chonova, François Keck, Jérôme Labanowski, Bernard Montuelle, Frédéric Rimet, Agnès Bouchez – Science of the Total Environment (not OA) Hospital wastewaters (HWW) contain wider spectrum and higher quantity of pharmaceuticals …
So our first attempt at entering the world of bacterial taxonomy and the description of a new species came out today with the thrilling title of “Porphyrobacter mercurialis sp. nov., isolated from a stadium seat and emended description of the genus Porphyrobacter“. The story leading to this paper took us into a lot of new …
Just got sent this by Katherine Bowman from the Board on Life Sciences. This is really important and if you know of someone who would be good please consider nominating them. Request for Committee Nominations — Microbiomes of the Built Environment: From Research to Application The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine are …
A new paper just came out from Dunn et al about how urban stress effects microbial communities in Manhattan. Urban structures can provide barriers to species movement and create islands of life, both for macro- and microscopic creatures. Here, they sampled soil bacterial and fungal species, as well as ant communities, from small road medians and large …
One thing we come back to over and over again with the microbiology of the built environment is the importance of “metadata”, meaning information about the site/time/temp/humidity, etc. where a sample is collected. Particularly for big environmental surveys, this kind of information is critical for latter understanding patterns in microbial communities. Work like the project …
A recent study from Meadow et al at the University of Oregon looked at the individual microbiota that humans shed into their surrounding environment. They sequenced the airborne microbes that colonized a sterile chamber once each individual entered. They found that this left a microbially distinct and detectable signature, much like a fingerprint, after 1.5-4 hours. …
Here are the microbiology of the built environment papers that were already featured on my MicrobiomeDigest blog this week, all in one handy edition. The first paper is about dust, so Siouxsie & The Banshees – Cities In Dust would match perfectly. The ecology of microscopic life in household dust – Albert Barberán – Proceedings B …
OK this looks like it will be really really interesting. Laurie Garrett sent me a link to this announcment about a meeting of the Empiricist League in New York: What are the 15,000 microscopic lifeforms that live on the subway? How disgusting are the contaminants in the Gowanus Canal? Can we use technology to stop …
According to a recent BBC news article, NASA is doing a Mars simulation project to see if six live human beings can survive being isolated in a dome together. From a MoBE perspective, it would be cool to study this system. It’s completely closed to outside microbes – the people living in this dome have to …