Finally got around to reading “Impacts of Flood Damage on Airborne Bacteria and Fungi in Homes after the 2013 Colorado Front Range Flood” from the labs of Shelly Miller and Noah Fierer. The massive floods in 2013 provided the researchers with an opportunity to examine the lingering effects of flood damage, even post remediation. Ideally …
The environmental engineering research community now recognizes that it is important to understand the bacterial ecology of premise (building) plumbing systems to control opportunistic pathogens (OP). Many investigations, including those supported by the Sloan Foundation MoBE program, have begun to shed light on the factors driving bacterial ecology in drinking water systems. While the bacterial …
A new volume of Studies in Mycology was published recently and is dedicated to the diversity in the fungal genera Aspergillus, Penicillium and Talaromyces, all of which play a significant role indoors. The issue includes 6 papers related to our Indoor Mycota Barcode of Life (IM-BOL) project funded by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Program …
We publish a newsletter every month here at microBEnet. And I thought it would be good to also publish to the blog the various summaries and roundups from the newsletter. Past newsletters are archived here. Here are some of the highlights from this latest newsletter. MicroBEnet Blogs A summary of the recent topics posted on microBE.net …
Nice new paper that may be of interest: PLOS Pathogens: From Dandruff to Deep-Sea Vents: Malassezia-like Fungi Are Ecologically Hyper-diverse by Anthony Amend. Malassezia are commonly found in many studies of human skin and when they have been found in other places sometimes it is thought that they are vagrants having come from the skin of humans or …
For anyone looking for another reason to fear hospitals, nosocomial infections (hospital acquired infections), or spinal injections, here is a story for you. Contaminated spinal injections were given to patients in 20 states and led to 751 individuals developing fungal meningitis and 64 deaths. FDA and CDC officials conducted a preliminary investigation and discovered a …
With the recent popularity of “green” buildings, we have to wonder how these new materials affect the microbes in the built environment. This 2010 paper from researchers at the University of Texas examines fungal growth in such materials. The study involved artificially and naturally inoculating four green building materials and their non-green counterparts with Aspergillus niger, as well as …
Just came across this review from Sharpe et al. at the University of Exeter, UK; “Modifiable factors governing indoor fungal diversity and risk of asthma”. I’ve just skimmed it so far, but it seems to be a good starting place for getting a handle on this topic. I like the emphasis on “modifiable factors”, implying …
A group of us from Jonathan Eisen’s lab attended the General Meeting for the American Society for Microbiology (ASM) last month in Boston. A major highlight of the conference was “We Are Not Alone: Microbial Revelations of the Built Environment,” a symposium that was organized by the Junior Advisory Group that is made up of postdocs and …
“Susceptibility of green and conventional building materials to microbial growth” Indoor Air journal, accepted for publication Abstract Green building materials are becoming more popular. However, little is known about their ability to support or limit microbial growth. The growth of fungi was evaluated on five building materials. Two green, two conventional building materials and wood …