Worth a look: Special issue of @NYASAnnals on “Antimicrobial Therapeutics Reviews” 

  There is a whole issue of the Annals of the NY Academy of Sciences that may be of interest.  The focus of the issue is on Antimicrobial Therapeutics Reviews. Some of the papers are freely available.  These are Resistance diagnosis and the changing epidemiology of antibiotic resistance(pages 5–17) by David McAdams Resistance diagnosis and the changing …

From genomes to phenotypes: Traitar, the microbial trait analyzer

There is an increasing number of studies with a large number genomes recovered from isolate, metagenome, or single cell sequencing. To bridge the gap between the available genome sequences and available phenotype information, we have developed Traitar, a bioinformatics software to phenotype bacteria based on their genome sequence (see workflow below) . Traitar includes phenotype models for …

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 …

New papers on Microbiology of the Built Environment, December 10, 2016

Microbes on buildings Analysis of dark crusts on the church of Nossa Senhora do Carmo in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, using chemical, microscope and metabarcoding microbial identification techniques – Christine Gaylarde – International Biodeterioration & Biodegradation ($35.95) The dark crust on the surface of the Nossa Senhora do Carmo church, in the centre of Rio …

Koala Poop Microbiome Class: Week 8, Phylogenetic Trees

(This blog post was prepared by students enrolled in the Koala Poop Microbiome Class in the Fall of 2016 at UC Davis) The last seven weeks of laboratory and computer work have been a mixture of successes and failures that eventually brought us to Week 8. The goal of this week was to build phylogenetic …

Evaluating the impacts of synthetic and natural indoor surface finishes on the microbiome

The Sloan Foundation gave me one more thing to be grateful for this Thanksgiving: a grant to evaluate the impacts of different surface finishes on the indoor microbiome. My previous work identified a relationship between antimicrobial chemicals and antibiotic resistance genes in dust.  This new project will build upon these results using an experimental system to …

Assessing biochemical activity and metagenomic codes to a “T”

We’re recruiting a student/postdoc for this project! If it sounds interesting, please contact the Huttenhower Lab! We were happy to hear that we’ve been funded by the Sloan Foundation to continue our study of microbes on the Boston subway. Our original study involved 1) identifying which microbes were resident in this built environment, 2) understanding …

National Council for Science and the Environment (NCSE) Conference and Global Forum (Washington, DC)

We are excited to announce that the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation will be sponsoring a symposium at the National Council for Science and the Environment (NCSE) Conference and Global Forum in Washington, DC from Jan 24-26, 2017 (http://www.ncseconference.org/). The 2017 conference has the theme “Integrating Environment and Health” and typically brings together between 1,000-1,200 attendees …

New papers on Microbiology of the Built Environment, October 1, 2016

Microbes in subways Bioaerosols in the Barcelona subway system – X. Triadó-Margarit – Indoor Air ($6 to rent, $38 to own) (…) We examined the microbiological composition and abundance in space and time of bioaerosols collected in the Barcelona subway system during a cold period. (…) Multitag 454 pyrosequencing of the 16S rRNA gene was used to …

MoBE symposium to be held during NCSE Conference in Washington, DC in Jan 2017

We are excited to announce that the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation will be sponsoring a symposium at the National Council for Science and the Environment (NCSE) Conference and Global Forum in Washington, DC from Jan 24-26, 2017 (http://www.ncseconference.org/). The 2017 conference has the theme “Integrating Environment and Health” and typically brings together between 1,000-1,200 attendees …