On March 7, 2014, Ben Johnson wrote an all-encompassing blog post about the microbiome of the classroom’s built environment. (Dr. Jonathan Eisen also mentions Johnson’s article in a blog post a day afterwards.) In his blog post, not only does Johnson describe the different types of microbes living on the walls, desks, and chairs in the classroom, but …
In researching previous studies conducted on microbes in space for Project MERCURRI, I ran across an interesting microbiology diversity study done on European Spacecraft-Associated (ESA) clean rooms in the Herschel Space Observatory. Historically, clean rooms are supposedly “sterile” environments that are used for the building and maintenance of spacecrafts, as directed by the UN’s Outer Space planetary …
It’s always hard, especially in today’s world, to find the shades of grey in any topic. Everything in media is portrayed as black and white because, frankly, it’s more striking. Similarly, most people are interested in either really beneficial microbes that can be used therapeutically or the pathogens that can kill us. We have studies …
We’ve been hearing a lot about Microbes in Space. But what about Microbes in Smog? Here in California, we know a thing or two about smog. To avoid it during the drought, we have been having a lot of Spare the Air Days lately to try to protect our air quality and reduce the amount …
Imagine you have a camera with a special “anti-macro” lens. This lens scrubs from any image all plants and animals and other “macro” organisms. And this lens also highlights the remaining living things – the microorganisms – anywhere in the frame (including those that were in or on the macro organisms removed from the image). …
The human microbiome and microbes in space are two of the sexiest topics in microbiology today. Together they have attracted the attention of the J. Craig Venter Institute. Hernan Lorenzi is leading a team to study how the composition of the human microbiome changes during long term space exploration. They will be analyzing the microbiome of …
Sequencing of PCR-amplified marker regions (e.g. 16S, ITS) for characterization of sample microbial ecology is a widely-used tool in Microbiology of the Built Environmenta (MoBE) investigations. Due to the large amount of data produced by these methods, sequences are typically clustered into operational taxonomic units (OTUs) based on sequence similarity to simplify downstream processing. However, …
From the meeting site: The 2014 National Healthy Homes Conference, brought to you by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, Rebuilding Together, HGTV and DIY Network, is the nation’s leading interdisciplinary event bringing together health, housing and other professionals dedicated to improving the lives and homes of America’s families and communities. New! Register Now …
We need your help! One of the goals for microBEnet in 2014 is to host/organize/support targeted workshops within the broad area of the microbiology of the built environment. In the past we’ve been involved in a number of general workshops since the field was so new. Now we’d like to focus more on specific areas …
Nice new paper from Karen Dannemiller et al. (the senior author is Jordan Peccia from Yale): Citation: Dannemiller, K. C., Lang-Yona, N., Yamamoto, N., Rudich, Y., & Peccia, J. (2013). Combining Real-Time PCR and Next-Generation DNA Sequencing to Provide Quantitative Comparisons of Fungal Aerosol Populations. Atmospheric Environment in Press. The abstract is copied below. Basically, they …