Koala Poop Microbiome Class: Summary and Class Materials

As introduced a few months ago, our lab (with indispensable help again from Ashley Vater) taught a new research-based freshman seminar course.  The impetus for this course was one that we ran last year, testing if Swabs to Genomes was possible in a 10-week quarter.  Given the complexity and expense of the genome sequencing, we …

Swabs to Genomes Class: Summary and Course Materials

A few weeks ago we wrapped up Spring Quarter here at UC Davis and the end of our experimental “Swabs to Genomes” class, taught as a freshman seminar.   As we introduced here, the idea was to take a set of students from colonies on a plate (from a swab) through a collection of ready to …

Fungal DNA, mycotoxins, cat allergens and fatigue in classrooms

This recent PLoS One article on Associations with Fungal DNA and Mycotoxins in Classroom Dust seems especially appropriate considering the blossoming of flowers and accompanying seasonal allergies that’s now happening in our part of the world. Sick building syndrome (SBS) is associated with the following symptoms: ocular, nasal, throat and dermal symptoms, headache and tiredness. Norback et al (2016) studied …

More Fresh Air in Classrooms Means Fewer Absences « Berkeley Lab News Center

(Author’s note, this article is a bit out of date but I just found this draft and am posting it because I think it’s still an interesting study) Trying to get outside my microbiology comfort zone and post some more about building science.  A recent study finding that more fresh air in classrooms correlated with …

UV in Classrooms to Control Airborne Bacteria

A recent study from Su et al tests the effects of ultraviolet germicidal irradiation (UVGI) on the amount of culturable airborne bacteria in elementary school classrooms. As expected, they found lower concentrations of these bacteria with UVGI treatment. Only the first page of the paper is available, unfortunately, so perhaps this is already addressed, but it …

Microbiomes of the Built Environment in the Classroom

This semester, I’m teaching a microbiology course for non-majors. The course was originally designed to focus on microbial diseases and public health, but as I crafted my version of the course, I wanted to broaden our view of microbiology and include the fascinating field of microbiome research. In our first few weeks (relentless winter weather …

Microbiome of the classroom: Teaching? Not really. Learning? Yes, definitely.

On March 7, 2014, Ben Johnson wrote an all-encompassing blog post about the microbiome of the classroom’s built environment. (Dr. Jonathan Eisen also mentions Johnson’s article in a blog post a day afterwards.) In his blog post, not only does Johnson describe the different types of microbes living on the walls, desks, and chairs in the classroom, but …