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. …
When most people think of the microbiology of the built environment they think of pathogens that hang out in buildings. Here’s a neat story about a helpful bacteria that lives in a very different kind of “built environment”… a uranium mill tailings site. These tailings facilities are where all the waste and excess rock from …
Recently I wrote here about a new report on a citizen microbiology effort focusing on microbes in water heaters: More on citizen microbiology project from @Penn_State & @NASA on thermophiles in water heaters via @scicheer @Sci4Cits Well, a new paper in PLoS One (PLoS ONE: Aquarium Nitrification Revisited: Thaumarchaeota Are the Dominant Ammonia Oxidizers in Freshwater …
Here are some quick notes from my trip to Austin Texas for the Indoor Air 2011 meeting. About the meeting: I got involved in helping organize a session at this conference as part of my microBEnet project. More on the planning and the meeting later but here are some quick notes just to get them …
I’m currently at Indoor Air 2011 sitting in on the Sloan Foundation-sponsored sessions on microbiology of the built environment. There are a number of great talks taking place and we hope to post some more information in the form of slides later. We’ll probably also post a more formal write-up about some of the discussions …
Summary/Key Points Microbes are found everywhere and are important everywhere. “Microbial Ecology” studies the interactions of microbes with each other as well as with their environment. It is important to attempt to study microbes as part of the community in which they are found and not just in isolation. Advances in DNA sequencing technology have …
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 …
When reading about the microbiology of the built environment there are far far more examples of the negative impacts of microbes on human health and building integrity than the reverse. Therefore, the occasional report of beneficial applications (however theoretical) deserves mention. Today I came across this old report (behind a pay wall) from the 2005 …
Microbiology Organizations The American Society For Microbiology Canadian Society of Microbiologists Mycological Society of America SGM.ac.uk : Society for General Microbiology Fully/Mostly Open Access Microbiology-Focused Journals BMC Microbiology International Journal of Microbiology Archaea Frontiers in Microbiology mBio PLoS Pathogens More complete list Non Fully Open Access Microbiology Journals From ASM Applied and Environmental Microbiology Antimicrobial …
Well, we posted about this story before – Legionella bacteria popped up at a party at the playboy mansion in February. And now apparently the source of the Legionella bacteria has been traced to … hot tubs (see Playboy Mansion illness traced to hot tub bacteria – Yahoo! News). Also of note – the epidemiologists used …