A fascinating side story to brain-defect microbiome study – major role of the built environment

So there is a new paper out that is incredibly interesting and has been getting lots of press coverage.  The paper was in Nature: Endothelial TLR4 and the microbiome drive cerebral cavernous malformations. Sadly it is behind a paywall, so not everyone out there will have free access to it. But it is available in sci-hub …

NASA MoBE Postdoctoral Fellowship: Virulence and Drug Resistance of Burkholderia and Ralstonia species isolated from the ISS potable water systems

The disease-causing organisms Burkholderia multivorans, B. cepacia, genomovars of the B. cepacia complex (BCC), as well as an unclassified species of Burkholderia, and its relatives Ralstonia pickettii and R. insidiosa account for 60% of the bacterial isolates obtained from the filtrated water system on board the International Space Station (ISS). Members of these genera can …

Your help is wanted in this #CitizenMicrobiology project: “BashTheBug – Help us fight antibiotic resistance!”

Just found out about this new Citizen Microbiology project via Andrew Su on Twitter who retweeted a post of Jennifer Gardy’s A neat citizen science project launched today as part of the big TB sequencing consortium -help spot drug resistance https://t.co/rFHsrmdBJk — Jennifer Gardy (@jennifergardy) April 7, 2017 Source: BashTheBug – Help us fight antibiotic resistance! …

From @CNNAshley at @CNN: Why NASA is sending a superbug to the space station 

Just a quick post here.  There is a new CNN story that may be of interest. An antibiotic-resistant superbug will launch from the same pad where the first manned mission to the moon lifted off to be studied on the International Space Station. Source: Why NASA is sending a superbug to the space station – …

Investigating the antibiotic resistome of rural and peri-urban Latin America

For many years, efforts to profile the antibiotic resistome of the human gut focused exclusively on two extremes of human society: Western, industrialized cities and remote hunter-gatherers. While these studies were undoubtedly important, they overlooked the majority of the world’s population, which exists somewhere between the two extremes. Indeed, three-quarters of the world’s population lives …

Genomes of eight bacteria from the built environment

We just published an extended genome report from eight bacteria that were sequenced as part of the “Built Environment Reference Genome” (BERG) project. BERG is a microBEnet run effort to increase the number of reference genomes in the Built Environment (BE) by offering free genome sequencing to a number of labs working in the field. …

New papers on Microbiology of the Built Environment, December 24, 2016

Microbes and buildings Bacterial Hygromorphs: Experiments into the integration of soft technologies into building skins – ACADIA 2016: Association for Computer Aided Design in Architecture – Carolina Ramirez-Figueroa – Newcastle University (OA) The last few years has seen an increase in the interest to bring living systems into the process of design. Work with living systems, nonetheless, presents …

A serendipitous demonstration of the power of social media in the classroom

“Social media is a waste of time”, “You should be writing grants”, “Spend more time at the bench and less time on Twitter” I don’t really want to wade into this discussion too strongly… there are a number of great resources out there documenting the utility of social media in science and science communication (examples …

Koala Poop Microbiome Class: Week 10, Antibiotic Resistance Measurements

Since this was the last week of the quarter, we didn’t require the students to blog as in the previous 9 weeks.  Also, mostly we recapped what had happened in the class and discussed various assignments.  But the students did measure the antibiotic resistance of their strains, and we also had a powerful demonstration of …

Koala Poop Microbiome Class: Week 9, Antibiotic Resistance

(This blog post was prepared by students enrolled in the Koala Poop Microbiome Class in the Fall of 2016 at UC Davis) This week we focused on antibiotic sensitivity on the individual bacteria that were identified last week. The day before class, the bacteria that we have been working with all quarter were recultured in …