Health care associated infections (HAIs) also known as nosocomial infections occurred in 4.5 out of every 100 hospital admissions in 2002 and contributed to 99,000 deaths (Klevens 2002). In the past many prevention strategies have focused on human based transmission (such as consistent hand washing) ignoring less obvious preventative measures such as those involving a …
EVE 161: Microbial Phylogenomics: DNA sequence based studies of microbial diversity. 2018 Class – Instructors Jonathan Eisen and Cassie Ettinger ### Topic Reading Slides 1 Introduction to course, and reading scientific papers Raff, Hug et al. Slides 2 Evolution of DNA Sequencing Sanger et al Heather & Chain Slides 3 Era I: Woese and the Tree of …
Are the microbes in our homes alive, or are they dead? If they are alive, what are they doing? We plan to answer these questions during my MoBE Postdoctoral Fellowship, funded by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. Bacteria in house dust can originate from places such as the outdoors or from the bodies of humans. …
Hats off to Tuesday’s New York Times article, “A Quest for Even Safer Drinking Water,” for daring to bring microbiology to the people. The article sheds light several key reasons we can no longer afford to ignore the vast microbial diversity that exists within the drinking water environment, among them are opportunistic pathogens and antibiotic …
Next in our “People Behind the Science” series is Kyle Bibby from the University of Pittsburgh. In this interview he talks about his future work on premise plumbing and the hospital microbiome project. Transcript of interview:
The next of the new Sloan foundation funded projects in the field is being undertaken by Jordan Peccia at Yale University and is entitled “Qualitative Building Moisture Characteristics and Microbial Diversity” Project description below: There exists a significant gap in our understanding of how the building environment mediates human exposure to bacterial and fungal diversity. …
Just kidding; I paid to get in, but this conference is not intended for a research architect/building scientist like me. This was my third ASM meeting, and now I know something approaching 1% of the jargon, so I was able to “mine” the sessions, especially the posters, for built-environment-relevant content. Under the surface of the …
Next in our “People Behind the Science” video series we have an interview with Greg Caporaso from Northern Arizona University. Here he’s talking about his new Sloan-funded project on “Office Surface Microbiomes Across Climates”. Transcript:
Going through the list of Microbiology Blogs we have curated at microBEnet and going to try to feature one of them every day or so. And just going to do this in semi-alphabetic order. Today’s blog: BioBE Center Authors: Multiple Summary of the BioBE Center (from their website): Although humans in the developed world spend 90% of their lives …
Rob Dunn of North Carolina State University has written a charming and fascinating piece on the microbes that inhabit our belly buttons. You can find it here on the Scientific American blog site (http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/2012/11/07/after-two-years-scientists-still-cant-solve-belly-button-mystery-continue-navel-gazing/). I strongly recommend it for the skill of his writing as well as the extremely interesting insights into the microbes in …