“If I could do it all over again, and relive my vision in the twenty-first century, I would be a microbial ecologist. Ten billion bacteria live in a gram of ordinary soil, a mere pinch held between thumb and forefinger. They represent thousands of species, almost none of which are known to science. Into that …
NOTE: This is a cross-post that I had originally published at Deep-sea News California has been a big transition for me. I mean big. Not only am I now living in the sun-drenched utopia I have long pined for (a climate which finally meets my minimum temperature preference of 90F), but I also have leaped …
The Genomic Standards Consortium recently held its 13th Workshop from March 5-7 in Shenzhen, China, where advances in genomics research were discussed in close proximity to the massive sequencing power of BGI. As a workshop participant, I found the meeting presentations to be both informative and exciting; the data spoke for itself, and many projects …
A while back we posted about our microBEnet project to have undergraduates come into the lab and sequence reference genomes from the built environment. That project now has it’s own blog, being maintained by the students themselves. Comments about our original post led to the following guest post by Paul Orwin, who is doing something …
Year 2030 1: Construct a building 2: Spray bacteria and fungi all around the building 3: Wait a few weeks and then open for business Sound crazy? Not necessarily. This scenario, or something like it, is the kind of application that could theoretically come out of current studies on the microbiology of the built environment. …
For those interested in microbial diversity and/or metagenomics there are two volumes that are coming out soon that are of interest: Handbook of Molecular Microbial Ecology I: Metagenomics and Complementary Approaches. Handbook of Molecular Microbial Ecology II: Metagenomics in Different Habitats Edited by Frans J. de Bruijn these two volumes are the most comprehensive coverage …
UPDATE 2/23/14. Major areas under development right now Wikipedia Editathon Full text analysis of the MBE literature Creation of a protocol sharing system Development of teaching materials for MBE field Networking tools to connect together researchers interested in collaborating Network analysis of the MBE field We are in the process of developing a diversity …
Heads up for what should be an excellent conference: Gordon Research Conferences – 2011 Program – Microbial Population Biology. Topics include a somewhat unusual mix of human microbiome, emerging infectious diseases, and the ecology of algae used as biofuels as well as a variety of other population biology topics.
For more information on the meeting see here: Home : Microbiota and mucosal immunology: the interface in health and disease. It looks to be interesting covering a variety of topics of relevance to the human microbiome and also likely relevant to the built environment.
So way back in 2014 a really interesting paper came out about a family of bacteria called Christensenellaceae, which was found to be the most heritable group in the human gut microbiome. Furthermore this group (represented by Christensenella minuta) was furthermore associated with low BMI. Most intriguingly, mouse work demonstrated that the injection of cultured …