This article (“Collection of SARS-CoV-2 Virus from the Air of a Clinic within a University Student Health Care Center and Analyses of the Viral Genomic Sequence”) caught my attention initially because of the air sampling aspect, but upon reading the Abstract I was struck by something else. Here they did air sampling in a …
So – just a quick post for now. More details to come. But I wanted to get a little bit about this out there. For a few years I have been teaching a mid-level course at UC Davis on “DNA sequencing based studies of microbial diversity’. The course has evolved over the years from a …
Of potential interest: Sept. 12-14 2017. Training course in Preserving, storing and maintaining microorganisms. From the site: Presented by staff from CABI, this course will be of interest to everyone involved in the handling, distributing and storing microorganisms. The course covers all aspects of culture preservation, maintenance and culture collection management and complies with the …
A paper from this past year by GarcÃa-Mena et al entitled “Airborne Bacterial Diversity from the Low Atmosphere of Greater Mexico City” uses culture techniques and 16S sequencing of the air in Greater Mexico City. There doesn’t seem to be as much literature on microbes in the air as there is about other surfaces and parts of …
After way more work than I imagined when we embarked on this project, we are almost ready to submit our first description of a new bacterial species, Kirrobacter mercurialis. Not exactly earth-shattering, given that about 40 bacterial species descriptions come out every month in the International Journal of Systematic and Evolutionary Microbiology (IJSEM). However, our …
Back in May, I had the pleasure of attending a talk at ASM 2014 by Didier Raoult on the the importance of culturomics. At one point in the talk he mentioned that they just came out with a paper that showed that they could get anaerobes to grow in the presence of oxygen if you …
When I walk around UC Davis campus or visit areas near hospitals I am always dismayed by the number of people wearing their scrubs when they go out to lunch, seminars, or just walk around. I have always wondered whether those scrubs harbor anything nasty. Well, a new study in the American Journal of Infection Control …
Good Morning America is taking on bacteria. Bacteria that are found indoors. The report: GMA Germ Test Shows Public Seats Full of Bacteria – ABC News has some interesting bits and the video is nice in many ways. The bottom line – they found bacteria (by culturing) in all sorts of indoor locations. And they did …
