In 2011, David Coil posted about one of our most utilized mobile built environments-the cars we drive every day (or maybe not, if we adhere to an environmentally friendly lifestyle). A small study had just come out, in which the authors had attempted to identify the bacteria and molds present in cars in different climates. As …
Viruses often tend to be overlooked in microbiological surveys of the built environment. This is because they don’t show up in either culture-based methods (which are specific to bacteria or fungi) or the commonly employed newer technique of ribosomal RNA sequencing (because viruses don’t have ribosomes). Even in metagenomic analyses where viral sequences are present …