Just a quick post to point out an article on phys.org talking about Amy Pruden’s fascinating work on probiotics for plumbing. Read her microBEnet post about the work here and a related post by Kyle Bibby here. From the phys.org article: “We believe this microbiome can be harnessed to control opportunistic pathogens,” Pruden said. For …
First of all, Happy Halloween everyone. I think my costume this year will be a blogger! For those that don’t know me, I’m Brent Stephens, an assistant professor in the Department of Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering at Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago, IL. I call my research team the Built Environment Research Group …
Quick post. There is a paper out from Jordan Peccia’s lab (authors Karen Dannemiller, Darryl Reeves, Kyle Bibby, Naomichi Yamamoto and Jordan Peccia) of potential interest: Fungal High-throughput Taxonomic Identification tool for use with Next-Generation Sequencing (FHiTINGS) – The paper alas is not open access so I do not have access to it as I write …
As we have ben writing about here, we are planning to do some microbial sampling of the International Space Station as part of our Project MERCURRI. Thus I read with great interest the following headline this morning: ISS Supply Ship Opens Hatch After ‘Bacteria’ Delay | World | RIA Novosti. Uh oh. Seems that some mold …
The Sloan Foundation recently convened grantees for the 2nd Conference on the Microbiology of the Built Environment, and the opening talk focused on the benefits of collaboration. Carlos Rodriguez reminded us (I’m paraphrasing), “When you look at problems in silos, you find solutions in silos. But when you look at problems across disciplines, you find …
This meeting is an annual gathering to bring together all of the Sloan grantees, their labs, and other stakeholders in the field to discuss the status of the microbiology of the built environment program. Thanks again to Mark Hernandez and Alina Handorean for all their hard work in putting it together. Note that I will …
In their just published paper in Environmental Science & Technology, “Tetracycline Resistance and Class 1 Integron Genes Associated with Indoor and Outdoor Aerosols,” Alison L. Ling, Norman R. Pace, Mark T. Hernandez, and Timothy M. LaPara have found that genes escape the indoor environment and can be found 2 km away. The abstract can be …
We have a guest post from Keith Seifert today. Keith is PI of the “Indoor Mycota Barcode of Life” (IM-BOL) project. See his post below: Walking in the footsteps of van Leeuwenhoek (part 1) “And therewithall, whenever I found out anything remarkable, I have thought it my duty to put down my discovery on paper, …
For information on Project MERCCURI, please visit our new website at www.spacemicrobes.org (This page no longer maintained, see above) Sampling activities at the Bay Area Science Festival (11-2-13) Surface sampling by the editors of Discover Magazine (10-29-13) Surface sampling at St. Peter’s School, Philadelphia PA (10-28-13) Shoe sampling at Deerfield Academy in MA (early October …
This article, about “Moving the Office Outside” talks about the energy savings and psychological benefits of creating outdoor office spaces. Sadly microbes don’t get a mention, even though there’s an ever-growing body of work showing that indoor air is less healthy than outdoor air (both in terms of chemical composition and microbial makeup).